


Intersections: Running With the Rebel

by Caedus501



Series: Intersections [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Glacially Slow Burn, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 04:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10236116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedus501/pseuds/Caedus501
Summary: “I know perfectly well how smugglers modify their ships to accommodate their trade and if I had wanted to arrest you for illegal possession of whatever you have tucked away in your ship then I would have done so earlier,” he told her in a surprisingly calm and reasonable voice.  “I’m here now because I need your help.”Now Jyn knew exactly what to say.  “Go to hell.”  She picked up her pace.“You should hear me out.” Jyn ignored him and shoved aside an innocent bystander in her annoyance at Willix’s inability to properly read the situation.  “If you enter that hangar I guarantee you will be arrested on the spot.”That finally made Jyn stop and turn to face him.  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” she said through gritted teeth.***Jyn Erso is now making her living smuggling contraband throughout the galaxy.  Cassian Andor is undercover in the Imperial Navy.  When Jyn is asked to help an Imperial Lieutenant who may be more than he appears to steal coveted resources from the Empire, she is given no choice but to agree to lend her skills to the heist.  A pre-Rogue One story.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This installment of Intersections presented some interesting challenges, but I very much enjoyed writing it nonetheless. Thanks to everyone who commented or kudo'd part 1, your feedback is appreciated! I hope you enjoy the second part of the story of Jyn and Cassian as they try to make their way through the galaxy as the events of Rogue One and the Battle of Yavin loom ever closer on the horizon.

_Intersections_

_Part 2: Running with the Rebel_

 

**Approximately 1 BBY**

 

This was not how Jyn thought this deal was going to go.  She stood at the foot of her ship’s boarding ramp, arms crossed over her chest, and an unrelenting glare on her face.  She knew better than to let herself be talked into anything she didn’t want to do or wouldn’t be fairly compensated for.  Saw Gerrera had told her when she was twelve that the first time she let someone walk all over her, it wouldn’t be the last.  So she stood, stoically listening to these two goons talk themselves blue in the face trying to convince her to haul their cargo into the Core for a meager 5,000 credits.  Well, bluer, she amended to herself, they were a pair of blue skinned Duros after all.

“Look, gentlemen,” she said interrupting the “free-market entrepreneurs” – their words, not hers – mid-rant, “I don’t care what Karrde told you, he doesn’t speak for me.  You’re asking me to run illegal weapons into the Core, which our ever magnanimous Emperor has seen fit to make his seat of power and personal bastion, thereby making it one of the most dangerous places to smuggle contraband through.  Which means you pay extra to compensate for the additional danger to me,” she explained, pointing at herself for emphasis.

The two Duros took in her words then turned back to one another and began to argue with each other in rapid Durese, occasionally throwing a gesture her way.  Whatever these two called themselves, it was clear that they had no idea how smuggling black market items worked.  Jyn lifted her eyes heavenward silently asking the world for patience, a virtue she lacked at the best of times. This job was supposed to be an easy pick up and an easy drop, basically just a quick influx of credits.  The description she’d received had clearly left out the salient parts. Either Talon Karrde had purposely lied to her about the job, which would be unlike him but not out of the realm of possibility, or the Duros had lied to Karrde before he passed the job on to Jyn.  Whatever the case, someone was going to end up on the floor with a hole smoking between their eyes if they didn’t come to a decision in the next two minutes, and twenty-to-one it wouldn’t be her.

“Alright, that’s just about as much of that as I can tolerate,” she muttered to herself before interrupting them again.  “Since I can tell you’re both just simple men trying to make your way in the universe, I’ll tell you what we can do.  Either you pay the full eighty-five hundred, half now, half upon delivery, or I can reduce the price to sixty-seven fifty and you pay in full up front.  Your choice.”

Being an unmovable mountain of conviction and stubbornness was all well and good, but sometimes it just landed you in more trouble.  She had a burn mark across her shoulder blades from when that lesson had hit home on a scouting mission years ago.  Needless to say, Jyn had learned the art of the compromise as a corollary to Saw’s original teachings and since then she’d used it to great benefit in decreasing the odds of getting shot at every time she tried to negotiate with someone.

The two fools once again turned to chatter at each other, no doubt debating whether to take the reduced price or to ultimately pay less now by taking the full price rate and make whomever was on the receiving end pay the rest.  Jyn knew it was all about providing perspective for her perfectly reasonable original price, but did they have to discuss it at such length?

“You have another forty-five seconds to decide or I’m getting back on my ship and leaving this rock you call a trading post,” she threatened.

“In that case, we will pay you the full price for delivering our cargo to Brentaal.  We will pay you forty-two fifty now and Nymbari will pay the rest when you give him the cargo.” The Duros stuck out a hand for her to shake in the universal signal for having struck a satisfactory deal.  Jyn shook his wrinkly, blue hand with only the barest hint of a smile curving her lips.

“Great news.  Show me the credits and I’ll start loading the cargo,” she told them.  Jyn sincerely hoped that the rest of this job, risky though it was sure to be in the Core, would go smoother than its beginning.

Jyn reminded herself that she was good at the whole smuggling thing so there was nothing to worry about.  Her success was largely due to the skills she had picked up from Saw and his people, even if she hated to admit it now.  Sure Jyn had been taught to read people and situations, learned when and where to apply pressure, and how to move with stealth as part of her informal military training, but they were all things that adapted easily into other circumstances.  It ultimately meant she knew how to get what she wanted.  She could have applied her training to any number of career choices, and for a while she had.  Jyn had sort of lucked into the smuggling gig, specifically the black market weapons trade, just as slicing abruptly lost its appeal.          

It was almost a year ago now that Jyn had found it necessary to leave Toprawa in a hurry, and stealing a woefully under guarded Allanar N3 light freighter had been her best option.  Whomever the previous owner had been, he or she had left the ramp down, posted no exterior guards, and left the safety of the ship to one man who had been asleep in the cockpit.  At the time, Jyn had thought that whoever had arranged such shoddy security deserved to have their ship stolen, and consequently felt no compunctions about swiftly tying up the guard and stuffing him in a locker with the EV suits.

Once she had put a few parsecs between her and the local troops who apparently held a grudge, she’d taken stock of all that her new ship had to offer, including the rather fascinating cargo hidden behind panels and under floor compartments.  She then decided to stuff the now irate man from the locker, whom she obligingly helped back into unconsciousness, into the single, tiny escape pod and shoot him down onto whatever planet was below her.  Replacing the pod hadn’t been cheap, but is was preferable to listening to the man shout obscenities at her from among the EV suits while she figured out where to go next.

She hadn’t immediately settled on changing careers to become a smuggler based on the capabilities of her new ship or its hidden cache of sniper rifles.  She was doing quite well as a slicer and saw no real reason to give it up.  She had been making her way through the galaxy, sector by sector, planet by planet, moving every few months and setting herself up with increasing frequency on Imperial occupied worlds.

Jyn hadn’t realized what she was doing at first.  To her mind she was just making the slightly more risky, but definitely more lucrative choice to go where the money flowed most freely.  People were always trying to evade the Empire so there was fairly steady work for a slicer almost anywhere in the galaxy, but the cadets on Academy worlds were willing to pay the most.  They came to her with all kinds of reasons for needing new scandocs, identichips, or other records.  Sometimes they had an epiphany about the true nature of the Empire, other times they realized they were failing enough to be headed for the exciting life of a sanitation worker on a Star Destroyer and wanted out.  Occasionally, instead of asking for credits as payment Jyn would ask a cadet to connect a device of her own to the hard line of the Imperial network on the base.  She would adjust records or create new identities as requested, and in her free time she would try to work her way through the entire Imperial network courtesy of the backdoor her additional little piece of hardware opened up for her.  She never once consciously put words to what she was looking for.

It was that last encounter on Toprawa with a client, a complete stranger, who had made her finally admit to herself that she had spent the better part of a year subtly looking for her father.

After all her years with Saw, all the times she had told herself to forget her father, that she hated him, after all the promises to herself that she would never try to find out what had happened to him after the man in white had killed her mother and taken her father away, after all of that, she had gone right ahead and searched for him anyway.  When that stranger with an accent she couldn’t place had suggested that Galen Erso was part of the Empire’s weapons development program a seed of doubt began to flower in her mind.  The man in white certainly wouldn’t have needed the black clad specters of death with him for anything innocent.  It was those thoughts that made Jyn suddenly lose all interest, however repressed and unconscious it had been, in locating her father.  If her papa had turned his genius to helping the Empire then he could burn in hell with the rest of them for all she cared.  She had shut the hatch on her memories of her papa’s low voice saying “Never change, Stardust,” and left them behind in the dark cave at the back of her mind.

With the realization of how her father had most likely spent the years since she last saw him, Jyn had dropped her identity as Kestrel Dawn, a slicer better known as Aurora, and decided to find a lucrative way to offload her newly acquired cargo.  When she had first contacted Ubo, one of the few people from her time with Saw’s cadre that she still had any fondness for, she had never imagined that in a year’s time she’d practically be a pro at smuggling and have a decent network of contacts that were reliable if not exactly trustworthy.  One such connection, made during a particularly tricky job that had landed her in out in Wild Space, was with the well-known information broker and smuggler Talon Karrde.  It was only a combination of luck, wit, and pure nerve that had convinced Karrde, who had Jyn squarely in his crosshairs at the time, to look kindly on her and shield her from the rest of Car’das’ organization.  In exchange, she did him a favor from time to time with very few serious questions asked.  Jyn highly doubted that Ubo, a hardened twi’lek smuggler himself, would have seen that coming.  He probably wouldn’t have been surprised though.  It was Ubo who had first really seen her potential back when she was still in pigtails.

Jyn had been seven or eight years old and terrified by everyone she suddenly found herself surrounded by after being spirited away from Lah’mu.  Ubo had seemed a giant – gruff, surly, blunt, and deadly with a vibroblade.  He also seemed to have a soft spot for a little human girl who was trying very hard not to show just how scared she was among all these battle scarred rebels.  Ubo had coaxed her out of her corner with quiet words of encouragement and handed Jyn her first stun baton.  She’d taken it with some trepidation, eyes wide as if to ask _what am I supposed to do with this?_   He smiled slightly without showing any of his pointed teeth and proceeded to very carefully show her how to use it.  Little Jyn had been determined to learn all she could from him to repay the, well it wasn’t exactly kindness, what he’d done, but it was something other than all the sneers she was growing accustomed to from the strange group.  She had learned quickly and well from Ubo and it was that, above anything, which made Saw realize that Jyn could be more than just an inconvenience underfoot.

Now here she was, getting ready to run contraband into the heart of the Empire on a ship she had effortlessly stolen.  Jyn had certainly come a long way since Saw had found her hiding in a bunker on Lah’mu.

 

***

 

The trip into the Core was an easy, if somewhat lengthy, two jumps from where she left the two Duros still jabbering in the ion wash from her sublights.  She’d always enjoyed the quiet hum of a ship travelling through hyperspace.  Between the bright stretching and bending of space around her and the way time felt suspended, Jyn always thought it must be what swimming through clear water would be like.

When she dropped out of hyperspace, however, her pleasant swim quickly turned into an icy plunge.  The sight of four ponderously large, gray Star Destroyers hovering in orbit around Brentaal IV greeted her.  She let out a violent litany of curses and killed her thrusters.  She couldn’t turn tail and run since she would have pinged their sensors as soon as she hit realspace.  It would also make her look guilty as hell.

If those two fools who had given her this job had known about this and not told her, then she was going to personally hunt them down and show them the full extent of her displeasure.  She hated to think what it would mean if Karrde had known and chosen not to warn her.  She didn’t think she had done anything that would prompt him to put her squarely in the Empire’s crosshairs, but she had no way to know for sure.

Worse still was the concept that Talon Karrde _didn’t know_ about an Imperial confab taking place in the spacelanes around Brentaal.  Information of that type was the lifeblood of Karrde’s lieutenancy with Car’das.  If he didn’t know about something of this magnitude, then the Empire was probably up to something that Jyn really did not want to be present for.

An electronic chirp sounded in the cockpit and the comm array blinked at her from the console.  There was no avoiding this so she had better get it over with.

“Allanar light freighter we have you on our scopes.  Please identify and state your destination.”

Jyn took a deep breath and hoped her voice would come out steady.  “This is the _Crystal Fire_ inbound for Cormond.”

There was a pause form the other end while they processed her information.  Jyns’s heart raced in her chest.

“ _Crystal Fire_ you will follow the course just transmitted to you to the designated landing pad.  If you deviate from this course you will be terminated.”

At least they were up front about it.  “Acknowledged,” Jyn replied.

She entered the new coordinates into her computer and turned her ship toward the planet’s atmosphere.  At least she hadn’t been pulled into a Destroyer and searched.  That would have been a death sentence for sure.  She had a little time now to prepare her cover story.

Jyn moved through her ship making sure all the hidden compartments and panels were shut properly and bore no marks that would give away their true nature.  She double checked the ever present “cargo” in her main hold, ensuring a datapad carried the manifest she’d forged to accompany her innocent crates of art and pottery from an artist’s colony on Krios.  Jyn kept these things on hand in order to provide evidence for her cover story.  She even had a legitimate shipping license from the colony on Krios.  She had done some aboveboard work for one of the art collectives who couldn’t afford a major hauler, but still felt their work should be distributed to the wider galaxy.  Of course, she’d only taken the work as a cover in the first place when she had been contracted by a shadier element just outside the colony to move some specially commissioned and highly secretive weapons across the galaxy.  Jyn hadn’t seen what all the hype was about after her forbidden inspection of the contraband had turned up what looked like a bunch of fancy lightwhips. In any case, she had ended up with documentation that could justify her stop on Krios and account for the crates that filled the cargo bay so that no one would look closer at the contents of her ship.  She went back to the colony every once in a while to keep up appearances.

With the props for her story firmly in place, all that was left was for Jyn to make certain the logs and computer systems would be equally prepared for the planetside inspection that was undoubtedly waiting for her.

Jyn was starting to think she had severely undercharged for this job.

The airspace over Cormond, Brentaal’s capitol city, was unusually clear of traffic.  For a major trade center at the intersection of the Hydian Way and the Perlemian Trade Route a lack of incoming and outgoing cargo ships was a serious detriment to business.  Jyn couldn’t imagine the Heads of the Brentaal Houses and the executives of the numerous megacorporations that kept headquarters in Cormond were terribly pleased with the downward swing in business.  Even though she knew the Empire maintained a large Imperial Customs office on the planet, Jyn very much doubted that four warships bristling with turbolasers was a common sight above the bustling world.  Not to mention the significant black market that operated just under the glittering surface of Brentaal’s cities which had surely taken a sudden break from usual activity when the Empire showed up in force.  It seemed no one wanted to risk drawing the attention of four Star Destroyers.

She brought her ship in to land, as instructed, in one of the hangars on the east side of the city.  Aside from the fact that there were about to be Imperial troops crawling all over her ship, the location was highly inconvenient if she was going to actually get the illicit cargo she was hauling off her ship.  Unsurprisingly, her original drop point was not in the middle of a bustling spaceport.  Not to mention just how very angry she would be if her contact decided to bail on her due to the Imperial presence.

 Jyn lowered the ramp, breathed deeply, and went to meet the welcome party.

At the foot of her landing ramp stood an officer in a crisp black uniform and peaked cap flanked by a squad of five stormtroopers.  The officer, a lieutenant judging by the number and colors of the squares on his rank plaque, was tall and wiry with dark hair that was still visible under his hat and a moustache that was just this side of Imperial regulation.  His eyes, though warm brown in color, peered at Jyn with the same cold, unflinching gaze all Imperial officers seemed to share.  Jyn bizarrely imagined the cadets being forced to practice in mirrors in their various academies.

“Identification, trade license, and manifest, please,” the lieutenant demanded in a sharp Coruscanti accent.

Jyn knew that as soon as she handed over the requested items, the troopers would be tearing open crates and poking through all her shipboard computer systems looking for anything out of place.

She also knew that the burn protocol she had initiated a few scant minutes ago had not yet finished its job of erasing the logs from the navi-computer, comm array, fuel guage, holonet, everything.  It then all had to be replaced with data that coincided with her Krios cargo.  In addition to saving her own skin, the protocol was something of a courtesy she provided to her clients so that they wouldn’t get burned because of her.  Well if she liked them it was.  That meant they paid her asking rate with a minimum of complaint and no haggling, there was an inconspicuous contact at the drop point on time, and there was no mouthing off about her involvement in anything at the local watering-hole.  Otherwise she would do whatever she needed to do to save herself without regard for the consequences to whatever scum had hired her.

All Jyn could do was play for time before surrendering her datapad and one of her expertly forged set of scandocs and identichips so that her program could finish.  She studied the straight backed man in front of her, tilting her head a fraction as though something was ever so slightly out of place.  Perhaps the classic “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” would be appropriate for the situation.

“Aach? Aach Penn is that you?” Jyn asked.  The name popped into her head out of nowhere, but she rolled with it and tried to put a pleasantly surprised expression on her face.  She was also trying to discreetly remove a very specific identichip from the back of her left glove.

Oddly enough, her ploy seemed to get a minute reaction from the officer.  It was nothing the troopers to either side and behind him would notice, but Jyn was staring him head on.  The officer’s eyes widened in shock and a brief flash of something that could have been disbelief or maybe terror flitted over his face.  The next moment Jyn wasn’t sure she had seen anything and his face looked colder than ever.

“Excuse me?” he asked in a flat voice.

“We met once, somewhere in the Outer Rim a year or two back,” Jyn invented.  “I forget where.  You must have been on leave, because you mentioned heading back to Kuat when we talked.” She didn’t even know if that sounded at all plausible.  Something told her that Imperial soldiers of any rank didn’t get leave.  The Empire wasn’t terribly keen on its employees having lives outside of their duties.

“My name is Lieutenant Willix.  I’m afraid you have me confused with someone else.  Scandocs and manifest, please,” he said, face impassive and hand outstretched.

Jyn tried to look embarrassed.  “My mistake,” she said, handing over her datapad and the preferred identichip she had finally managed to work out of its hiding place.  She had three sets of scandocs as Tanith.  The one she handed the lieutenant showed the forged documents related to her current alias, but it also carried a subroutine that would automatically download to the chip reader.  The subroutine activated about ninety minutes after the chip was scanned and would erase all traces of her identity from the reader and, if Jyn did her job correctly, any holonetworks it might be in contact with.

Of the other two identichips she kept on her, one introduced a different subroutine that was designed to spread through a localized holonetwork and send any data relating to certain flagged topics or people to a secure digital drop point that she could access anywhere in the galaxy.  The other identichip was just a standard chip.

She didn’t use the regular one all that often.

Willix briefly scanned over her shipping license and manifest before handing the datapad to the trooper on his right and instructing him and two of his fellows to “check it out.”

While they waited for the inspection team, he popped the identichip into his reader and studied the information it provided: Name, species, age, planet of origin, gender, the works.  He seemed to be giving it more attention than it warranted though, probably in order to figure out why some random woman had accosted him with a claim of prior acquaintanceship.

For Jyn there was nothing to do but hope she had bought herself enough time and wait for the troopers to return from their tour through her ship and either sound an “all clear” or call for her immediate arrest. 

Jyn hated waiting.

“So, it seems there’s something exciting happening on Brentaal these days, huh?” she ventured to fill the silence.

Willix didn’t reply.  He merely looked at her, one eyebrow raised in disdain and silently handed back her identichip.

If that’s how he wanted to play it then Jyn would oblige and keep her silence, but her closed mouth stayed in a frown and her eyebrows furrowed as though scandalized by such treatment from an old acquaintance.  She matched his cold Imperial chip-on-the-shoulder attitude with her own haughtiness.  Jyn refused to be cowed by the Empire.  They may have the superior strength and numbers, but they lacked essential backbone.

After a solid seven minutes of stubborn silence the three stormtroopers finally marched back down the ship’s ramp.  One took up his former position behind Willix, a second handed the Lieutenant the datapad showing the manifest with a nod, but the third stopped to have a private word with the officer.

Jyn had to work not to fidget as she eavesdropped on the trooper.

“Sir, the cargo and system logs all appear to check out,” the white armored figure said quietly.  He put a heavy emphasis on _appear_.  “But I know these ships.  They’re easy to modify and smugglers do it all the time.  Shall we conduct a more extensive scan of the ship?”

Jyn forced herself to breathe normally despite her rapid heartbeat and meet Willix’s stare.  He was openly studying her, from her braided up dirty blonde hair that was so different from her naturally dark locks, down her black and gray clad body, right to the tips of her scuffed boots.  Jyn had no idea what he saw as he looked, his face remained perfectly blank.  She could only hope he saw the immovable, and at the moment slightly miffed, Tanith Pontha she had molded herself into.

Her expressions, her mode of speech, and even her clothes had all been chosen to go with her new identity as a competent gun runner.  After her first two or three jobs she had quickly picked up on the reluctance of her potential clients to trust a young girl in bright colors with a smart mouth.  So Jyn adapted.

When she was building her new identity she’d decided to model her new persona on Tanith Myrah, a villainous pirate portrayed by Wynssa Starflare in one of her favorite holodramas.  That Tanith may have been a morally ambiguous pirate in the holodrama, but Jyn figured engaging in the black market weapons trade wasn’t exactly the most innocent of careers anyway.  What Jyn had really admired about Starflare’s pirate character was that as the captain’s right hand, his second in command, she didn’t take lip from anyone, from her captain to her victims.  She was a fierce fighter and commanded respect.  Tanith Myrah was everything an adolescent Jyn wanted to be in the midst of Saw’s band of warriors and precisely what she wanted to be now in her new smuggler’s life.  She borrowed the pirate’s name and her sense of style too.  Jyn had traded the flamboyant colors and casual fit of Kestrel Dawn for the somber blacks, grays, and sharp lines of the pirate.  She even changed the color and styling of her hair to look more like the fierce cut Starflare had sported for the holo.  In the end though, Jyn decided using Myrah as a surname was far too obvious.  She got the name “Pontha” from a quick search through a holonews network.

Sometimes it was easier to pretend to be Wynssa Starflare’s character staring down an Imperial officer than it was to be Jyn Erso staring down the Empire.

For now though, Jyn stood firm, returning Lieutenant Willix’s appraising look and waited for him to decide her future. 

“No need for a further scan,” he said eventually.  His eyes broke from hers and glanced up at a luxury Sorosuub yacht coming in to land at the far end of the hangar.  “We don’t really have the time in any case.  Miss Pontha you are required to check in with the Customs office in the Trade Hall.”  Willix handed back Jyn’s datapad and gestured at his squad to follow him to meet the new arrival.

And just like that Jyn, or Tanith Pontha rather, was free to go.  Better yet, in a bit over an hour the Empire would have no record she had ever been in this system.  Sometimes Jyn wished she had properly thanked Mako for showing her the finer points of slicing all those years ago, but there was nothing she could do about it anymore.

Now all Jyn had to do was figure out how to make her way to her original drop point, find a way to offload a shipment of illegal weapons right under the nose of the Empire, and then get the hell off Brentaal.  All without getting caught.

Oh, this was going to be easy.

 

***

 

Even with her detour through the Cormond Trade Hall to further her cover in case the Empire still had eyes on her and a brief walk through the city to find a speeder she could rent – there weren’t any for hire, so she had “borrowed” one – Jyn still beat her contact to their rendezvous point.  Either that or the mysterious Nymbari was hiding among the shadows, just as Jyn was, waiting for someone to show themselves.  The area on the western edge of the industrial zone of the city seemed free of Imperial stooges, but with all their long range sensors and fancy droids how could she be sure?

Jyn wondered how long she should wait.  Five minutes later she wondered if she was feeling daring enough to openly stride around the big warehouse in an effort to make something happen.  How long would the luck she’d been granted in the spaceport last?

She decided that doing something, even if it was risky, was better than waiting around for life to get with the program.  As an added bonus, her speeder ride over to the industrial sector had given her a decent survey of the area in case she needed to make a hasty escape.

Jyn pulled the hood attached to her tunic up over her head to help obscure her identity to any potential observing parties and stepped out into plain view. She kept her right hand near, but not on the blaster holstered on her thigh, and her eyes were open for anything that looked unfriendly.  She began a slow paced circumnavigation of the large warehouse where she would have unloaded her cargo if the Empire hadn’t parked itself on the planet’s doorstep.  Despite the number of droids moving in and out of warehouses carrying crates of all sizes onto and off of skiffs and lifts, Jyn didn’t see signs of anyone living until she had made it about three-quarters of the way around the building, and even then it was only a brief flash of blue disappearing around a corner.  It was enough for Jyn to risk speaking into the still air.

“You’re late!” she called.

The blue skinned, red eyed head of a Duros cautiously peered at her from around the corner of the warehouse.  Caution was all well and good, but Jyn had never met a weapons trader who spooked this easily.  Either this guy was even greener than she was, or she had severely underestimated the Imperial threat on this planet.  He didn’t come out to meet her, but waved Jyn over to his position instead.

“You’re Nymbari, right?” Jyn asked when she reached him.

“I am.  I didn’t think you would make it,” the Duros said glancing nervously at the empty streets around them.  “The Empire –“

“Thanks for the heads up about that by the way,” Jyn accused.

“I did not know!” Nymbari rushed to explain.  “By the time the destroyers took up orbit around Brentaal you were already in hyperspace and Kilgore said he had no way to contact you.  He asked Karrde for someone who would contract with us and you just showed up, Karrde gave us no other information.  I assumed you would turn around as soon as you caught sight of those four accursed monoliths up there.”

Jyn scoffed.  “What kind of smuggler would I be if I couldn’t get past an Imperial inspection team?”

“Apparently one that doesn’t deliver.”  The Duros’ nervous tone had abruptly disappeared and the conversation took a sudden turn.  “I noticed your speeder is rather lightly laden.”

“I may be good, but there was no way I was going to be able to get illegal weapons off my ship without the Imperial detachment in the spaceport knowing about it,” she said hotly, getting right up in his face. Then she took a breath and stepped back to cross her arms over her chest defiantly.  “I don’t know this place very well so I’m going to need some local help getting the goods over here.”

The Duros’ red eyes were unreadable to Jyn, but she nonetheless got the impression that he was sizing her up.  “If that’s the case, then the cost of whatever help we hire is coming out of your payment as compensation for not completing the job.”

That sort of statement was a one-way ticket to Jyn’s “I’d Kill You If It Meant Saving My Own Life” List and he’d made there in record time too.  Perhaps she should offer some form of congratulations.

 “Like hell it is!” Jyn said angrily.  “I came out of hyperspace to four Star Destroyers, managed to get past them, and then get out here without getting caught or turning you over.  If anything, you owe me an extra two thousand for the additional risk this job involved.”

“My comrades and I are paying for a service and you didn’t deliver.  I don’t see why I should have to pay your full price if you couldn’t be bothered to bring your ship to the specified drop point.”

“Actually, I couldn’t be bothered with getting shot down for not landing where the Empire pointed me.  I’ll not be cheated out of my fair payment because you’re too cheap to hire a skiff and a couple of men!”

“How are additional men supposed to get the weapons out of the spaceport when you can’t?”

Jyn shrugged.  “That’s not really my problem.”

“I’m making it – argh!” Unexpected blasterfire had caught the Duros in the shoulder.  Jyn whipped around, eyes wide and searching, as Nymbari fell sideways into the wall.

The shot had come from behind her, she was sure of it, which left her with very few options for cover.  She grabbed the Duros roughly by the arm and quickly hauled him across the street into the shadow of a tall building just as more shots blistered through the air. She hoped their new position would block their attacker’s angle, but she couldn’t count on it.

“What was that you were saying about not selling me out?” Nymbari said between groans.

“This wasn’t me!” Jyn hissed back.  “I know I wasn’t followed out here, I would have noticed the sound of another speeder.  Either the Empire has sensors out here or it’s a random patrol.”  Jyn didn’t even believe the “random patrol” explanation herself.  The industrial sector of the city was too far from the central Trade Hall where all business, trading, and fine dining occurred to be worth patrolling.  Even with the Empire’s sudden and vast presence on Brentaal, sending troops out this far was a waste of manpower.

“We have to get out of here,” Nymbari insisted.

“Yeah, no kidding.”  The problem was, her speeder was across the street and around a corner, not to mention she still didn’t have a clear view of whoever was shooting at them or from where.  Her best guess was the rooftop of a nearby warehouse across from where they had been conversing.  That left any number of locations and no safe route to her speeder.  They’d just have to make a break for it.  “Alright, my speeder is just around the corner up there.  If we stay along the wall and move fast we should make it.  I don’t think he has a good angle on us right now since there hasn’t been another shot.”

“If we’re safe here, then I’m not moving.”

Jyn looked at the Duros and shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said and took off in a half crouch, keeping as close to the building as she could.  She heard Nymbari grumble but follow her anyway.  Jyn only hesitated for a fraction of a second as she rounded the corner before sprinting into the open street.  A burst of blasterfire hit the ground just wide of them as they ran.  Jyn jumped on her speeder and brought it to life with the push of a button, Nymbari hastily climbed on behind her.  She revved the engine and pulled a sharp U-turn in the street to head back toward the city center.

Before she even reached the next cross street Jyn heard the sound of speeders closing in on her from ahead.  She wasn’t positive about what direction they were coming from though, the combined sounds of multiple speeders echoed through the empty streets and bounced off the tall durasteel buildings, confusing her ears.  She took a wild guess based on where she thought the earlier shots had come from and took a hard left at the next opportunity. The injured Duros behind her let out a muffled groan as the speeder swung about and his one armed grip around her waist seemed to spasm.  There was nothing she could do to help him, the two stormtroopers on speeders bearing down on them from the north were far more worrisome.  Jyn couldn’t keep flying in a straight line or they’d be caught for sure.

There was a sharp whine of small blaster cannons firing behind her and Jyn felt the heat of a laser bolt pass dangerously close to her leg even as a spray of duracrete erupted into her face.

“What the kriff?” she exclaimed.  Nymbari cursed in Durese.

The speeder shuddered in her grasp as a bolt hit the chassis just below her.  Of course.  Of course the trooper’s speeders had mounted cannons.  What would the Empire be if they didn’t attach weapons to every kriffing piece of equipment they owned?  She had to get out of their direct line of sight.

She abruptly pulled the speeder around the side of a building as another round of cannon fire lit up the air behind them.

The arm around her waist spasmed again.  “Hold on!” she yelled over her shoulder as she banked the speeder to swerve between two buildings and avoid a large cargo lift that was blocking the street in front of her.

“I – I’m trying,” Nymbari said desperately, but his arm disappeared from around her waist at the next sharp turn and he slipped sideways off the speeder with a cry.

Jyn spared him a brief shout of “No!” but there was nothing she could do.  Going back would mean her own death.  Besides, the Duros didn’t really know anything about her anyway, not even her name.  _And_ he’d made it onto her List by being a selfish bastard.  There was nothing for it.

Jyn gunned the engine and focused on losing the troopers behind her.

A quick glance over her shoulder told her there was only one left.  The other had probably doubled back to pick up the Duros.  That made her job easier.  She searched her memories of the ride over to this side of the city for anything that would help her.  There was one building she remembered that had had its bay doors wide open showing a mostly empty interior interspersed with large support beams.  She might be able to lose him among the columns, or at least slow him down enough for Jyn to get within blaster range.  It was worth a shot.

At least it would be if she could find her way back to that warehouse.

Jyn wove her way through the streets moving in the general direction of her target warehouse, managing to stay just ahead of the stormtrooper on her tail.  She definitely wasn’t out of firing range though.  Sizzling hot bolts of red energy pinged through the air around her, occasionally clipping the non-vital parts of her speeder.  Either the trooper behind her was an exceptionally poor shot, or she was a better pilot than she gave herself credit for.

At last Jyn spotted the warehouse she was looking for and zipped through the open door.  She nearly took her own head off not ten meters into the building when she almost didn’t duck under an unexpected bit of scaffolding.  So maybe there were a few more obstacles inside than she had anticipated, but she could still make this work.  Provided her reflexes didn’t suddenly fail her.

Hearing more than seeing the speeder behind her, Jyn plotted her course through the maze of beams, support struts, and towers of scaffolding along the walls.  The trooper wasn’t firing at her as much, probably because he too needed to concentrate on not flying into a pillar.  Jyn carefully maneuvered her way across the large room toward a quiescent row of hulking construction droids.  Lined up in their powered down state they resembled nothing so much as a near indestructible wall.  She pulled around behind it and jumped off to the side while the speeder kept going, heading for a fiery collision with a wall.  The pursuing trooper veered to follow the speeder, unknowingly crossing right in front of Jyn’s hiding spot where she crouched with her blaster aimed and ready.  She fired a quick succession of shots at the passing trooper and he went tumbling into a durasteel support beam along with his speeder.

Jyn sought cover behind the construction droids, but she could still feel the heat of the explosion as it consumed the Imperial trooper.

She stood up on shaky legs and worked to bring her breathing back under control.  There were still two speeder mounted troopers out there and at least one of them was sure to come check out the explosion.  Jyn had to clear the area fast and hope anyone looking for her assumed that she had gone out with her speeder.

The worst part was, now Jyn had to make her way back to the city center on foot.

 

***

 

Jyn spent several hours resting up and laying low after she got back within the vicinity of the Trade Hall.  Her hood pulled up and an extra scarf wrapped around her shoulders in a partial disguise, Jyn wandered the streets of Cormond eating greasy street food and trying to blend in.  There weren’t exactly squads of stormtroopers patrolling the streets, but she watched at least three Imperial shuttles land in the private spaceport attached to the Trade Hall and a troop transport ship or two followed in their wake.  Jyn had no doubt that the interior of the Hall was absolutely crawling with Imperial officers and soldiers who didn’t want to mix with the locals.  Job or no job, she would be much happier away from this planet and the Core in general.

A couple of hours out from her rather more explosive than anticipated meeting with Nymbari, she figured enough time had passed for it not look suspicious if she headed out of the system.  Had she gone directly back to her ship and blasted off the Empire would have known something was up.  If Jyn could just get back to the _Crystal Fire_ she ought to be home free.  She wasn’t loading or unloading anything, the Empire had no reason to target her and keep her from leaving. 

She started to make her way to the east side of the city where her ship was docked.  She moved at a purposeful pace so that vendors wouldn’t shout at her and surrounding pedestrians would unconsciously keep out of her way.  Yet even over the dull roar of a bustling city, Jyn thought she could hear someone calling her.  Given that no one on this planet short of that Imperial Lieutenant from the hangar knew her name she ignored it.  Tanith wasn’t an uncommon name, especially here in the Core.  She kept walking until that same voice, closer now, called out a different name, one that absolutely no one on Brentaal should have known.

“Dawn.  Kestrel Dawn!” 

Jyn was careful not to show any sort of recognition.  Her step didn’t falter, she was certain she didn’t flinch, and the man who called to her with an old alias was behind her so he couldn’t see her eyes widen just a fraction.  When a hand reached out to grab her arm and spin her about she reacted automatically, her left fist coming up to punch the man squarely across the jaw as her right arm tangled in his and held him in place so he couldn’t duck away from the blow.  The man – tall, with dark hair and a thin moustache – stumbled backward and held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

“Hey, sorry.  I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said with a smooth Coruscanti accent then rubbed at his jaw with one hand.

“I don’t know who you think I am, pal, but I sure as hell don’t know you or anyone called Dawn,” Jyn snarled at him.  It never paid to recognize an old identity.  It typically got one into trouble and let those looking to settle old scores know that you were around and available for payback.

“I must have been wrong,” the man said, studying her with narrow eyes, “but I could have sworn I recognized…” he trailed off in the face of Jyn’s harshest glare.  “I guess not.  You really don’t look anything like her.  Dawn was brighter than you, I think.”

While Jyn was relieved to hear that she had so completely embodied her identity as Tanith Pontha to the point that she wasn’t even recognized by people she had apparently met before, the man himself looked almost disappointed.  Now that she looked at him full in the face, Jyn realized that she did know this man.  She recognized his eyes and the dark color of his hair.

It was Lieutenant Willix.

What the hell was an Imperial officer doing out of uniform?  That was a new one for her.  He was still dressed impeccably in starched trousers and a clean, dark gray tunic belted over a white high necked shirt.  Everything in the way he held himself screamed military – the way he moved, how he looked her dead in the eye, even down to his neatly combed hair.  There was absolutely no possible way that she had ever, under any name, personally known a lieutenant in the Imperial Navy.  Jyn was one false move away from pulling her blaster on this man, consequences of public murder be damned.  Her best play was to shake him off and get back to the _Crystal Fire_ as fast as her legs could take her.

“I’m glad we established that,” Jyn said and brusquely turned away from the officer to continue toward the hangar.

He didn’t seem to take the hint.  “You may not be the slicer I knew, but you _are_ Tanith Pontha, a smuggler,” he said matching her pace as she walked.

“I am not!” Jyn said with all the indignation she could muster.  No semi-undercover Imperial Lieutenant was going to catch her admitting to breaking the law.  “I am a freelance cargo hauler for small business concerns mostly in the Mid and Outer Rim.”

Willix raised an eyebrow in disbelief.  “Right, and I’m the Queen Mother of the Hapan Consortium.”

Jyn had no response for that.  She really didn’t know what to do with an out of uniform Imperial officer who cracked jokes.

“I know perfectly well how smugglers modify their ships to accommodate their trade and if I had wanted to arrest you for illegal possession of whatever you have tucked away in your ship then I would have done so earlier,” he told her in a surprisingly calm and reasonable voice.  “I’m here now because I need your help.”

Now Jyn knew exactly what to say.  “Go to hell.”  She picked up her pace.

“You should hear me out.” Jyn ignored him and shoved aside an innocent bystander in her annoyance at Willix’s inability to properly read the situation.  “If you enter that hangar I guarantee you will be arrested on the spot.”

That finally made Jyn stop and turn to face him.  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Perhaps not, but a couple of troopers picked up a local weapons trader by the name of Nymbari who was waiting on a shipment of black market rifle scopes and explosive charges from an unnamed source.  Since he was either unwilling or unable to name his contact before he died of his injuries, all freighters docked in Cormond that are not registered with one of the companies which operates in the city are under watch.” He took a hand held mini holoprojector off his belt and brought up an image of the _Crystal Fire_ clearly being guarded by a squad of stormtroopers.

“Do you Imperials always stick your noses into local business?” Jyn asked trying to reign in her anger.

Willix smiled tightly.  “They’re just lending a hand to local security while the Generals and Admirals are planetside.”

Jyn barely noticed his odd use of the pronoun “they” in her frustration at being waylaid by the machinations of the Empire.  “Still, it’s just a couple of stormtroopers.  I can handle that.”

“Not in the middle of the private hangar in the Trade Hall you can’t, which, by the way, is currently being patrolled by four squads of troops.”

“What?  How did my ship get there?  I had it locked up tight with biometric security scanners and a secure launch protocol that only I knew!” Jyn exclaimed heatedly.  The two of them were starting to attract attention with their tense argument in the middle of the street.

Willix seemed to pick up on their audience as well and gestured at Jyn to follow him as he once again started moving with the flow of the crowd.  “Did you really think the Empire didn’t have people who could get around such things?” Willix asked with condescension dripping through every word.  For just a moment, Jyn considered turning her back on the Lieutenant and finding her own way offworld, but then he continued.  “I had your ship moved there for a reason.”

“ _You_ had it moved?  You bastard!  You put my ship, my property, where I can’t get it then have the gall to ask for my help?”

“Yes!” he hissed.  “You need my help to get your ship out and I need you to get me and a full shipment of bacta and other medical supplies out with it.  It was the best place for your ship to be to make that happen.”

“Bacta?” she asked confused.  “What, have you suddenly decided to defect?”

“Something like that,” he hedged.

The way he answered her flippant question caught Jyn’s attention and made her look harder at Willix.  This time she made an effort to see past the military bearing and the Imperial accent to the person underneath.  It was subtle, almost non-existent, but Jyn could just see a flutter of _something_ in the dark of his eyes. 

Jyn could spot the difference between a criminal and a Rebel and especially an Imperial, in fact, she was exceptionally good at it.  Her time with Saw had been rather informative on that front.  She had learned over time that there was a difference between the way secrets settled on the shoulders of a Rebel spy and an Imperial covert officer. The Imps could never quite get the chip off their shoulder from knowing that they had the might of the Empire on their side and there was no true danger for them.  The Rebels, on the other hand, always slipped up one way or another.  They let their desperation or urgency shine through in little words or gestures.  Sometimes they couldn’t quite keep the glimmer of hope from their eyes.  She saw it with Saw’s men too, despite how well trained they were.  It was the way they _needed_ for something to be true or they _needed_ to get information to their superiors before it was too late.  Each Rebel knew that every minute spent out in the galaxy was another minute closer to the inevitable sound of blasterfire cutting them down.

That _something_ in Willix’s eyes practically shouted Rebel at her.

Not that it made much of a difference.  She was no more inclined to help someone who was clearly a Rebel spy than she was to help an Imperial officer, no matter what he had done to her ship.

Jyn shook her head as much to clear it as to signal her refusal.  “Not a chance!  I never signed up to steal Imperial cargo.  I don’t need your help as much as you seem to need mine.  Right now I’m a free agent.  I may miss the _Crystal Fire,_ but if I have to abandon it to get out of this Imperial death trap then I will.  I have enough to buy passage offworld.”

“Not if you’ve been flagged in the system.  The Empire is controlling all incoming and outgoing traffic as well as public transport registries for as long as those Destroyers are in the system.  You can’t go anywhere.”

Jyn gave Willix a wicked smile and called his bluff.  “And which records have been flagged, exactly?”

The determination on his face didn’t change, but Willix closed his eyes hard for a moment in his only concession to defeat.  “I still don’t understand how you did that.  I scanned you’re identichip myself.”

“The Empire clearly has its faults.  Or maybe you’re just not as good as you think you are,” Jyn said, smirking at him.

“But _you_ are,” he said pulling her to a stop in front of a building that claimed to rent rooms by the night.  “And that’s why I want your help.  I can’t do this on my own.  I’ve been through all the scenarios and the ones in which I don’t have help don’t end well for me,” he told her.

“I fail to see how that’s my problem.”

“It’s your problem because as of right now, I still have enough authority to have you arrested and sent to an Imperial prison camp without anyone batting an eye.”

Jyn’s hands clenched into tight fists at her side and her voice practically came out as a growl. “So you’re going to blackmail me into helping you run away from the Empire with a load of bacta? How very _rebellious_ of you.”

“I’ll do whatever I have to,” he said looking her in the eye without a hint of remorse.

That was something Jyn could understand.  She hated that Willix had manipulated her to the point of having no choice in the matter, but she understood it.  It was precisely how she had survived on her own over the last few years, and even before that.  Jyn did whatever she deemed necessary to keep herself alive and free in this galaxy, and if that meant coercing the help of others or using them as a shield, then so be it.

“Fine,” she agreed in a tone still laced with anger.  “How exactly am I supposed to help?”

Willix glanced quickly at the street around them then used his head to gesture at the building they were in front of.  “In here.  I’ve rented a room for us to talk in.”

Somehow even that made Jyn balk.  He had been so sure that she would agree to help him that he had rented a room in a part of the city that he already expected to find her in.  If Jyn was really that predictable then she was losing her edge.  Predictability got you killed.

Willix silently led her past a front desk to a turbolift at the back of the lobby.  He swiped a card over a reader near the lift door and they immediately began to ascend through more floors than Jyn cared to count.  Her ears actually popped with the speed of it.  The buildings of Brentaal weren’t quite as tall as the cloudcutters she vaguely remembered from her early childhood on Coruscant, but they were certainly tall enough.  They came to a stop on level 57 and Willix unerringly marched them through the winding corridors to a door that responded to another swipe of his keycard.  Jyn filed into the room, being sure to glare at the man as she did, and occupied the only comfortable looking chair in the place.

She had to give Willix credit for not looking put out in the slightest about her hostility or her chosen seat.  Instead, he paced in front of her until he finally started to speak.  “There are two things you need to know before we start discussing the finer details of our operation.  First, for this to work and for us both to make it offworld, in your ship no less, then we are going to have to agree to commit to the plan and see it through.”  He glanced at Jyn to gauge her reaction, but she remained silent, a dubious set to her eyebrows.  “Second, the bacta is a diversion.”

That made Jyn’s eyebrows furrow in confusion.  In just five words he had managed to pique her interest, whether she liked it or not, so she settled in to hear what he had planned.

 

***

 

At 0800 local time the next morning Jyn stood in the shadow of the Cormond Trade Hall working up the courage to go inside.  Nevermind the fact that she was just going in through the service entrance at the back of the building where hundreds of cargo crates were moving to and fro under the supervision of droids and living beings of all kinds.  Her hesitation came from knowing that as soon as she stepped into the carefully controlled chaos she’d be putting Willix’s plan into motion and there would be no turning back.

The conversation about how exactly they were going to liberate Jyn’s ship, several crates of medical supplies, and some information that required a high security clearance all at once turned out to be surprisingly short considering the number of vital details involved.  Evidently you couldn’t walk off an Imperial base, even a temporary one, for long without being missed.  It was a decently thought out plan and Jyn only suggested a few changes based on the skills she knew she had.  She hadn’t wanted to admit that she was a damn good slicer since Willix already had some preconceived notion of her slicing abilities, but it made everything go smoother once she could point out easy work arounds in the system if she was given access.

It turned out that access wasn’t going to be the hard part.  Once Willix had given her the basic outline of his plan, she had asked just how he expected her to get into the fancy spaceport at the top of the Trade Hall.  In response he had handed her a datacard of some sort along with a datapad bearing the Trade Hall insignia on the back. “With these,” he told her.  “The Port Master’s datapad which went missing early this morning and a temporary permit for the Trade Hall hangar that was issued before the Empire arrived.  It’s for a luxury yacht owned by a woman called Zahava Q’mel.  I believe she’s a Baroness of some kind.”

“Unless there’s magically no holoimage attached to it, this really doesn’t help me,” Jyn had pointed out.

“You’ll figure it out.  I’m confident in your abilities.”

Jyn let out an exasperated huff.  “I’m a smuggler! Not a slicer.  What makes you think I can alter a permit and have it pass muster?”

“Two things. First, your impeccable manifest and license.”

“Hey! That license was real,” Jyn said indignantly.

“And,” Willix said raising his voice to drown her out and simultaneously lifting an eyebrow.  “Second, that clever trick you pulled with your records.”

“All of which could have been done by a third party,” she argued.

Willix had taken a moment to study her before deciding, “You’re resourceful. You can make that permit work for you.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you’ll be detained for trying to access a secure, private spaceport,” he’d said with a shrug.

Jyn gave him a foul look.  “You know, I don’t think I actually like you very much,” she grumbled into the datapad in her lap.  Then her head had snapped back up almost immediately to stare in shock as a burst of laughter escaped Willix.  She had never heard an Imperial soldier of any rank laugh before.  Or someone who was as close to an Imperial officer as she would ever know.  It was odd.  Jyn had been having a hard time getting a read on the man aside from “Rebel Intelligence officer.”  He was essentially a professional liar, even if he never admitted it, so she wasn’t sure what was real and what was calculated for her benefit.  That laugh had seemed real though.

“Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to tell me that,” he told her, still smiling.

Regardless, the datapad had all the capabilities necessary for her to not only alter the information and holoimage on the permit, but to change the records in the Brentaal system as well.  It was good enough to be going on with and when she told him so, he seemed to take her approval as tacit confirmation of her status as a slicer in addition to a smuggler, and they moved forward from there.

Now, as she stared at the carefully choreographed dance of cargo crates and shipping containers, Jyn wasn’t so sure that some fancy coding and a small satchel of specially purchased decorative clothing were going to be enough.

She walked into the melee as though she was meant to be there, looking for a computer terminal that she knew had to be around somewhere.  There happened to be a gray jacket and cap with the Trade Hall logo on them lying abandoned on a powered down piece of machinery so Jyn threw them on over her regular clothes just in case.  One of the men or women who worked here was just going to have to make do with shirtsleeves for the day.  She made her way to the terminal that came into view along a side wall near the service lift.  Unfortunately there was a gray skinned Er’kit sitting in front of the large bank of monitors showing different shipping instructions, schedules, orders to be filled, and any number of things.  Her first step would be to get the Er’kit away from the terminal so that she could order a load of empty cargo crates to be delivered to the private hangar by 1100.  She and Willix were counting on the fact that no one would find a delivery of empty crates suspicious.

Jyn had known there was going to be a fair amount of improvisation involved in the day, but she had hoped that she would be able to ease her way into this whole bacta heist, as she had taken to calling it.  She knew what she had to do, she had been the one to lecture Willix on the matter of rolling with the punches after all.  Her face took on a determined set as she remembered that particular exchange from the previous evening.

She had shrugged and told him, “Then we’ll improvise,” when he mentioned he had no back up plan should their efforts get detected and they got locked out of the system.  Their getting offworld without attracting the attention of four Star Destroyers worth of turbolaser batteries depended on one of them taking the _Crystal Fire_ off the no-fly list.

Willix had closed his eyes and rubbed at his temple with an exhausted sigh.  “How can it be a plan if it’s improvised?”

“You can’t plan for everything.  You just can’t.  You have to be able to adapt to the circumstances as they’re given to you.  If you don’t, or can’t, then you’re going to get caught or killed.” Jyn made sure to catch his eye before she continued, “And I will warn you now: If I think you are weighing me down, or in any way ruining my chances of getting out of here alive, then I will cut you loose in a heartbeat.”

Willix nodded his head in understanding, never breaking eye contact with Jyn, face perfectly free of emotion.  “I’d expect nothing less, but remember what I said earlier.  I will do what I have to.  Don’t give me a reason to leave you behind.”

They had stared at one another then, each taking the measure of the other.  Eventually they came to a silent agreement that they would work together to steal Willix’s med supplies, find the information he needed, and get off the planet.  They didn’t have to trust each other, exactly, they just each had to do their part and not get caught. 

So Jyn would invent a reason for the technician at the terminal to leave his post, and she would not get caught.  “Hey buddy,” she called to him, “we’ve got a—“

She didn’t even get to finish her sentence before the Er’kit turned to her and started jabbering angrily in a language she couldn’t even pretend to recognize, making frequent use of some rather violent hand gestures.  Her Huttese was spotty and she could pick out a few phrases of Bocce and Mando’a, but she couldn’t even name this language.  It was probably whatever they spoke on this guy’s homeworld.

“Well, sorry,” she said, exaggerating the word and trying to play off his obvious annoyance.  His answer was to angrily point at her then at his spot and use his less-than-pleased expression to dare her to disagree.  “Yeah, yeah. Sorry I’m late,” she ventured.

The Er’kit threw his hands up in disgust and rapidly abandoned his post.  Apparently his shift was over and Jyn was meant to replace him.  That was easier than she could have hoped for.  It would seem she had free access to the computer terminal for as long as it took for his actual replacement to show up.  Maybe she could do a little more than just order a half dozen empty crates to be sent up to the spaceport.

That part of the job was a simple matter of sliding a request into the vast queue that was constantly being updated and adjusting the time stamp on it so that it jumped to the right section of the list.  The rest of it was Jyn seeing what kind of access she could get to the systems controlling the doors, lights, lifts, air flow, holonet signal, anything that would be useful in creating the diversion that Willix had demanded of her.  The work of only two minutes and a flurry of typing was enough to confirm her initial suspicions that any tinkering she did to the systems on the two floors of the Trade Hall occupied by the Empire would have to be done from a terminal actually on one of those floors. 

It turned out the commercial Houses and companies represented in this center of commerce took their systems and holonet security very seriously.  Each company had a closed holonetwork connection and systems controls specific to their offices.  Meaning, the computer terminal in the large cargo bay of the Hall could tell her about the goings on where she was and in the spaceport high above, since so much merchandise moved between the two, but it was useless for anything else.  Jyn had suspected that would be the case based on her explorations of the Port Master’s datapad which Willix had given her last night.  If she had known she was going to end up pulling this kind of stunt on Brentaal, then Jyn could have brought along a little device that she had made frequent use of as Kestrel Dawn to slice her way into secure Imperial networks across the galaxy.  Instead she’d have to do it the hard way.  She had decided not to tell Willix any of this since he seemed liable to freak out at the prospect of Jyn sneaking herself into the Imperial levels of the building.

Apparently he didn’t think much of her ability to be subtle.

This job, however, didn’t call for subtlety so much as stealth, and Jyn had learned the value and importance of stealth when she was twelve and not as proficient at controlling the noise she made while tailing a target.  Her fingers ran unconsciously over a thin scar on her side where she’d been on the receiving end of a vibroblade attack in a mostly deserted street when her quarry had led her into a trap after being alerted to her presence by her too audible footfalls. 

If Jyn needed to get herself onto the restricted Imperial floors then that’s what she would do.  Without waiting for whomever was supposed to be at the terminal doing their job to return, Jyn slipped away to find an entrance to the main floors of the Trade Hall.  She didn’t have to worry about blending in so much among the businessmen and traders that flowed through the building like water, but she kept the spaceport service gear on just in case.  There was a bank of turbolifts near a far wall that would be her best bet to get her as close as possible to the top two floors where the Empire had taken up residence for the time being.  She took her time to observe how they operated though.  Everyone here seemed to be fairly concerned with security so there was a good chance that the lifts needed some kind of special access code or keycard to work.

Sure enough, Jyn watched as several well-dressed men and women of several species ran a card the size of an identichip through a reader before the lift cars would go anywhere.  Jyn thought about what she would need to do, then went to find out which companies kept offices on the floor just below the restricted Imperial levels.  After that, she needed another ten or so minutes to locate someone in the ceaseless crowd who bore evidence of working for one of those companies and pickpocket their access chip.  The familiar routine of distracting her mark’s attention so she could brush her fingers through his pocket and relieve him of his property came back to her as easy as breathing.  It made Jyn smile.

Access chip in hand Jyn made her way to the bank of lifts and managed to secure herself a private car to the upper levels.  No doubt the lifts were monitored so she’d have to find a way around that.  As the car slowed down, nearing its destination, Jyn readied herself to hit the emergency stop in a casual and seemingly accidental manner.  She didn’t want the door to actually open on the building floor and risk someone sending the lift back to the lower levels before she was done.  She searched the walls for the telltale sign of a surveillance cam while appearing to look concerned with the car’s sudden stop in upward progress.  Once located Jyn took one of her still compact and neatly folded truncheons out and began banging on the walls and calling out to see if anyone could hear her.  In her efforts to look distressed she easily crushed the cam lens.  Now that she could stop with the theatrics and she had the car nicely halted in its tracks, Jyn extended the truncheon to its full length and set her sights on the emergency escape hatch above her.  Even with the extra reach of the truncheon Jyn still had to jump to hit the hatch release button on the ceiling of the car. 

Climbing up through the hatch was another matter.  She got out her second truncheon and used it to once again hit the button while holding the tip of the other in the way of the now closing hatch.  It caught and the pressure of the sliding mechanism held the dangling truncheon in place so that Jyn could jump up and use the makeshift pole to haul herself up toward the ceiling.  The satchel slung across her body weighed her down a bit so she braced her feet on the side of the car.  There was just enough room for Jyn to snake her fingers into the gap and get a decent old on the edge of the hatch with one hand.  She used all her strength to hold on as she carefully grasped the baton and used her elbow to trigger the hatch release for a final time.  She got her elbow up over the edge before her feet slipped off the wall and managed to haul herself up onto the top of the lift.

Jyn Erso would never let being short stop her.

Now all she had to do was climb up the maintenance ladder to her desired floor.  Twenty ladder rungs later, Jyn came to the doors marking the lower of the two Imperial levels.  She considered prying the door open on the assumption that it would be the less occupied of the two floors, but looking above her she could see the dark outline of a maintenance tunnel next to the door for the next level.  Usually such tunnels weren’t much bigger than whatever droids were used to perform basic maintenance in the building, but Jyn was small.  If she could squeeze her way through to an exit point then she wouldn’t have to worry about possibly setting off an alarm if she tried to pry open a door without authorization.

“Tanith, how are you coming with that system override?” Willix’s voice crackled through the comlink hooked to her belt, echoing loudly in the close space.  So much for stealth.  Jyn would have to turn it off if she hoped to remain undetected.

She grabbed her comlink to answer, “I’m a bit busy here.”

“I’m nearly in position.  You only have the next thirty minutes in which to create your diversion, after that we lose our window.”

“Understood.  Going silent.” She clicked off, hoping Willix would know what she meant and not jump to conclusions if she didn’t answer her comm.

Jyn finished her climb and shimmied her way into the narrow tunnel.  She had to crawl on her forearms through the dark, her eyes extra wide to spot any change in the black that indicated an outlet.  She struggled through several twists and turns but eventually found an exit hatch.  At this point she didn’t really care where it led, she would deal with whatever waited for her if it meant getting out of the cramped dark.  Jyn barely even admitted to herself that she got slightly claustrophobic if she spent too long in confined dark spaces.  Too many bad memories.

She dropped out of the hatch into a room filled with blinking consoles and monitors.  Just what she needed, a data terminal.  It also seemed to be staffed by two completely surprised low level Imperial security guards.  Jyn didn’t give them time to react.  She lashed out at the nearest guard hitting him hard in the solar plexus.  He doubled over, the wind knocked out of him, and Jyn brought her knee up into his face.  He fell to the floor, blood spilling from his nose.  She turned to the second guard who had managed to draw his blaster, but Jyn quickly grabbed hold of his wrist with one hand and stepped around him to press on his shoulder as she twisted his arm and forced his grip on the weapon to loosen.  She kicked him to his knees and slammed his head into the durasteel console casing.  He too slumped in a heap on the floor at Jyn’s feet. 

She took a deep breath to steady her nerves but didn’t stop to appreciate her victory.  Instead Jyn went right to work on the terminal.

Willix had pointed out a specific computer access point that he wanted her to both lure the techs away from and give him access to, bypassing the security clearance.  When she told him that it seemed like she was the one doing all the work in this heist he somehow managed to imply that he would be busy doing other illicit things without actually telling her his part of the operation.  This was why she preferred to work alone.  She didn’t have to worry about other people messing things up for her if she only had to look after herself. Still, she wanted to get both herself and her ship safely out of the Core so she followed the plan and sliced her way into the main systems control center.

“Alright,” Jyn muttered to herself as she worked. She brought up the cam feed from her target room and studied the two bored looking techs staring absently at their screens.  “What will make you leave your post?  What if we make it look like one of your security feeds is out?  Whoops! There goes back hallway 326.”  She grinned as she keyed in a code to remotely turn off all surveillance equipment in a hallway that had stormtroopers walking up and down it every few minutes.  She watched as one of the techs finally noticed something was wrong.  He first tried giving the monitor a good whack, as if that ever fixed anything, then set to examining the problem on his computer terminal.  “Hmm, can’t have you poking around,” Jyn said to herself.

She quickly pulled off her purloined Trade Hall jacket while she found the correct comm code for the target room.  She rubbed the fabric over the comm as she spoke into it hoping it would disguise her voice and give the impression of static.  “Hey, there’s something messing with our transmitters over here. Hallway 326,” she said and watched the reactions of the techs.  There was some kind of short debate between them, but one did get up from his chair and leave the room.  Judging by the cams he appeared on next he was heading for hallway 326, which happened to be clear on the other side of the vast building.  Jyn had been hoping they would both go to check out the problem, but one was better than none.

“What do I try now?” Jyn asked the quiet room.  She couldn’t unlock access to the computer terminal for Willix, a surprisingly easy feat considering how hyped up on security this place was, until both of the techs had gone lest they notice anything.  The window for her diversion was closing quickly, and she had no doubt the uptight Willix was probably panicking somewhere even if he looked outwardly undisturbed.

Her next trick was to turn off the vents to the room and jam the comm signal.  With any luck the tech would have to leave to call a maintenance droid from somewhere else.  Five minutes later, Jyn could see him get up to leave the room after sticking his hand in front of the vent and frowning, but he hesitated in the doorway.  There was probably some Imperial regulation about not leaving your post unguarded, but how was he supposed to let anyone know something was wrong if he couldn’t raise anyone on the comm?  He left.  Jyn waited a minute to be sure he’d really gone before restarting the airflow and unlocking the security on the computer terminal in the room using a simple program that decrypted the override password.

Jyn clicked her comlink back on and spoke into it quietly. “You’re clear.”  She didn’t get a vocal response, but Willix double clicked his comm to show he got the message.  It was only half a minute or so before a tall shape in a dark Imperial Lieutenant’s uniform and cap entered the room and headed straight for the computer.

Now a solid three-quarters of Jyn’s job on this heist was done.  Her next task was to get into the private spaceport as someone completely not herself.

An electronic ping sounded from somewhere near her feet cutting off Jyn’s thought process.  She looked around the floor trying to spot the disturbance.  The ping sounded again followed by a voice. “Ensign Graff, I want a report from your station.  What do you read on hallway 326?”  The guards where she was must have had personal comlinks, even if the techs in the other room hadn’t.  Jyn thought that was odd, but it wasn’t really her business.  She couldn’t exactly answer the comm since she was guaranteed to sound nothing like Ensign Graff. 

“Ensign Graff, report!” came the order again.  Jyn was still caught in indecision about what to do.  “I’m sending a squad up,” the voice said after a long pause then clicked off.

Jyn had to get out.  Now.  She didn’t know the layout of the building well enough to be sure of avoiding an incoming squad of troopers if she went out the main door.  There were the maintenance tunnels, but that didn’t get her access to as many places as she’d like, and they were just a little too dark and cramped for comfort.  She opted for the air vents instead. 

She located the main vent near the floor of the opposite wall and pried off the cover so she could crawl in feet first.  She replaced the grille just as the door hissed open and five gleaming white stormtroopers entered the room, blasters raised.  She silently pushed herself backwards into the duct as far as she could and listened as the troopers discovered her two victims.

“Sound the alert! We have an intruder!”

Jyn grimaced at the command.  Willix would not like that at all. Perhaps he was right about her apparent lack of subtlety.  She could probably argue that it counted as a diversion, just not the one they had planned.

As all but one of the troopers left the room to start a low level manhunt, Jyn started to crawl in the direction she thought the service lift lay in.  The air ducts were just as cramped as the maintenance tunnels, but at least there was a square of dim light every few meters to alleviate the black.  She looked through a vent grille every now and then to try and get her bearings.  To her surprise Jyn saw that after five minutes of crawling she had made her way to the target room where Willix was looking tense as he stood at the data terminal.

On impulse Jyn kicked in the grille, but didn’t immediately pull herself into the room.  Something told her Willix was liable to shoot if she didn’t identify herself before she came out of the vent.

“Willix, it’s me!” she called.  “Don’t shoot.”  She poked just the tip of her head out to make sure he wouldn’t shoot her anyway before hauling herself the rest of the way into the room.

He looked at her warily, blaster still raised, his face hard.  “What are you doing here?  What happened?” he asked.

“I, uh,” Jyn hunted for an explanation that wouldn’t sound as bad as the reality. “I had to make an unscheduled exit.”

He stared at her for another few moments, judging her story, before stowing his blaster and turning back to the computer console.  Jyn looked over his shoulder to see that he was making a copy of several files onto a datacard.

“What are you taking?” she asked studying the file names but not making any sense of them.

“What I came for.”

“Which is?” She sighed when he didn’t answer.  “I already know who you work for, it’s kind of obvious.”

“Imperial navigational charts showing the hyperspace routes they use to resupply the fleet and the codes and protocols to go with them.  The ones they’re using for the next six standard months, at least,” he finally admitted.

“Any particular reason this had to be done now and not when you were in orbit where you couldn’t bother me?”

He glanced at her briefly before answering, clearly not amused.  “The heads of the Imperial Navy and Army are on Brentaal working out the supply orders and shipment schedules with all the different companies.  This is one of the biggest trade hubs in the galaxy.  Practically everything that moves from one place to another comes through Brentaal, or at least one of its companies, including Imperial Fleet supplies.  Most of the negotiations concluded this morning and now I’ve got the inside line on when all those supplies are going where.”

Jyn was actually impressed.  In the hands of the Rebel Alliance that kind of information could mean more than just knowing when to disrupt Imperial supply lines, it gave them the opportunity to capture some of those resources.  Saw Gerrera may have been on the fringes of the official Rebellion back when Jyn ran with him, but even then she knew how desperate they were for everything from food to ammunition to fuel for their fighters.  If she and Willix actually managed to get out of the system in one piece, he would have way more than just a load of bacta to show for his time with the Empire.

“Not bad, Lieutenant,” she said in approval.  “But why does the Brentaal Trade Hall have access to classified Imperial hyperlanes?”      

“They don’t. I managed to put a cloning transmitter chip in Admiral Trier’s personal datapad, but it only transmits over the local holonet signal so I had to access it from a fixed terminal in the building,” he said pulling a datacard out of a slot in the console and sticking another one in.  He began to root around in what were clearly the Admiral’s files probably searching for anything else that would be of use to the Rebellion.

“But you could have used another datapad for that.  It would have to use the same holonet signal if it was on this floor in this building.  Then we wouldn’t have had to go through all the trouble of clearing this room!” she said annoyed.

Willix shook his head in disagreement.  “Standard Imperial datapads don’t have the ability to write to datacards.  It makes it harder to steal classified information aboard ship.”

“Good to know the Empire doesn’t even trust its own people,” Jyn grumbled and rolled her eyes.

“Can you blame them?” Willix said with a small smile and a gesture at his current state of stealing Imperial secrets while wearing Imperial garb.

“Fair enough,” Jyn said and she moved around to study the bank of monitors that showed the surveillance feeds from the rest of the floor.  There was definitely a pair of troopers headed in their direction, but they were still a good half a building away.  “We may have company in about three minutes,” she warned. 

“Almost done,” said Willix.  “I just want to see if – I knew it!”

Jyn glanced back over at what he was doing. “What?”  All she could see was old shipping manifests that he started copying to the fresh datacard.

“See where this is all going?” he asked, pointing at the screen.  “DS-1. No location, no ship name, just DS-1.  There are records of shipments made to that designation that go back years, but I can’t find anything that explains what or where DS-1 is.”

“So?”  Jyn didn’t see why this was so exciting to Willix.

“There is also talk from haulers, traders, even smugglers of massive amounts of matériel and other resources moving around the galaxy, going somewhere undefined.  All I know is there is enough fuel, supplies, spare parts, even personnel being allocated to whatever DS-1 is to equal something like twenty Star Destroyers.”

Jyn shrugged.  “Maybe the Empire has a secret shipyard somewhere.  It wouldn’t exactly surprise me.”

“Nor would it surprise me.  That’s probably where they would keep someone like Erso and his classified research,” Willix muttered as he continued to scroll through Imperial data.

Jyn’s hand twitched at her side and she stopped breathing for a second, but she tried not to show any other reaction to Willix’s casual reference to her father.  “Who?” she asked in a slightly strangled voice.

“A known Imperial collaborator, it’s not important,” he said, waving aside her concern.  “The thing is, if the Empire had a secret shipyard that’s most likely where they would be building the Super Star Destroyers and they’re not.  Anyone flying by the Kuat Drive Yards can see them being built.  This is something else, something bigger.”

“ _Super_ Star Destroyers?” Jyn asked incredulously, completely thrown by the turn in conversation.  “You’re kidding right?  I’ve never even heard of such a thing.”

“No one has.  They’re the newest ship of the line for the Imperial Fleet.  _Executor-_ class Star Dreadnought.  Almost twelve times the size of a standard Destroyer and with all the extra armament to go with it.  The first one is set to deploy in about a month.”          

Jyn eyed Willix skeptically.  “And the Empire just shares this type of information with everyone in the Navy does it?”

“Not exactly,” Willix said, finally looking a bit uncomfortable.  “I was actually stationed at the Kuat Drive Yards with ISB up until a few months ago when I was transferred to the Navy.”

Now Jyn was incredibly suspicious of the man.  “You were actually on Kuat?” she asked tentatively, giving Willix a funny look. That was just a bit too close for comfort to the rambling story she had come up with to distract him when she had first encountered Willix outside her ship the previous day.  Jyn took a moment to study him and really look past the Imperial uniform.

His hair was regulation short and all his vowels clipped in the Imperial preferred Coruscanti fashion.  She was almost certain that she didn’t know anyone who fit his description. But those eyes.  There was something in the shape and color of his eyes that _was_ familiar.  As their gazes locked Jyn got a quick flash of those eyes watching her as she lounged in a fancy bar.  She recalled anger in those eyes when she momentarily let her guard down in a scuffle.  Yet there was nothing concrete behind the memories.  It could have been anyone, really. 

Jyn absentmindedly rubbed at a spot on her upper arm where she got grazed by blasterfire a year ago on Toprawa.  She could see Willix track the movement with his eyes, his brow furrowing slightly when he saw where her hand had come to rest.  “Are you sure you don’t—“

He didn’t finish.  Willix’s attention, and Jyn’s too, was caught by the sound of footsteps coming from the hall outside their control room.

“Did I mention they’ve issued a low level intruder alert?” Jyn whispered.

His eyes immediately narrowed on her. “What did you do?” he asked, equally quiet.

“I didn’t have a choice!” she answered indignantly.  “Come on.  We can go out the other door.”

“Not yet.  The card isn’t finished writing, I can’t leave.”

“They think you’re one of them, right? Head them off!”

“I can’t,” hissed Willix, “I’m not exactly supposed to be here.  I convinced someone else to cover my shift in the spaceport.”

“Fine.” Jyn pulled out her blaster and moved to take up a position in the room that allowed her decent cover and gave her an unobstructed shot at the door the troopers were approaching.

“No!” Willix said and forcefully lowered her blaster arm.  “That will draw too much attention, especially if there’s already a security alert.

The stormtroopers were mere seconds from opening the door and Jyn had no out.  “What then?” she demanded in frustration, stowing her blaster again.

Willix threw a quick glance toward the door then grabbed her, spun her around, and whispered, “Please don’t punch me” before kissing her full on just as the door hissed open behind them.

Jyn immediately froze, her whole body going still in shock.  Then the indignation at being manhandled without permission set in and she tried to pull violently away from him.  Willix merely growled in frustration and forcefully backed her into a wall, his long fingers wrapped firmly around her upper arms holding her in place. 

It was right about then, when she had a knee halfway to his groin in retaliation, that Jyn simultaneously caught on to what he was doing – she could see two figures in white armor in her periphery shaking their heads as they hurried through the room to the far door – and noticed that his mouth was surprisingly gentle and warm on hers despite the painfully tight grip on her arms.  Through the momentary haze in her brain Jyn could just hear the conversation between the two troopers despite their efforts to stay quiet.

“Is that Willix?” 

“I guess even the iceman melts every once in a while.”

“Yeah, but why up here?  There’s no way he won’t get caught.” 

“Probably just showing off.  Locals aren’t supposed to have access to the upper tiers of this building.  It’s exclusive.”

A few seconds before she heard another hiss of a door opening, reality reasserted itself as Jyn realized she was half melted into Willix with her hands tightly wound in his uniform. _Well this just won’t do_ , she thought and gave him an abrupt shove backwards to break the contact as soon as the door closed behind the stormtroopers.  They were both breathing like they had just sprinted the length of the Trade Hall, but Willix was regarding her with a suspiciously blank expression.

“If you ever try that again, I will shoot you where you stand,” she scolded him, not quite sounding angry enough to her own ears.

The man shrugged unapologetically.  “Public displays of affection make people—“

“Uncomfortable.  Yeah, I know the idea. Just don’t do it again.  The public is not the only one left feeling uncomfortable,” she explained.

“Duly noted,” he said, but he was smirking as he said it.  “I thought you would appreciate my improvisation.”

She turned away to check the progress on the datacard, partially to keep from punching him, but mostly to hide the flush she felt heating her cheeks.  It wasn’t that she hadn’t enjoyed kissing him, just the opposite.  It was that she had enjoyed it quite a bit, but he was temporary and a distraction and distractions got you killed.  Jyn refused to let herself be killed for a pretty face and quick mind.

“Your datacard is ready,” she said, using her voice to make her displeasure with the situation apparent.  Jyn checked the security monitors one last time to make sure the coast was clear before moving to the main door.  “What do you say we get out of here, pretty boy. I’ve just about hit my limit with all these Imps.”

She heard more than saw Willix’s head snap up to stare at her.  Jyn could have sworn his neck cracked with the speed of it.  “What did you call me?” he asked, astonishment written all over his normally calm features.

Jyn merely raised her eyebrows at him and used her head to indicate the direction she intended to move in.  “The freight lift.  Let’s move.”

Despite his apparent state of shock – Willix honestly seemed more spooked by her use of the epithet “pretty boy” than he had been after kissing her – he followed her at a slight jog through the winding corridors of the Trade Hall.  They listened carefully for the sound of approaching footsteps to tell them when to seek cover down a side hallway or in an abandoned office.  They were slowly making their way toward the service lift that Jyn would have to take back down to street level so that she could throw on the clothes she had stashed in her bag before making her way to the private spaceport as the wealthy Baroness Zahava Q’mel.  Willix would also have to make his way up to the rooftop hangar, but he had more options on how to get there as an Imperial Lieutenant.

Even with Willix’s superb recall of the floorplan of the building and his precise knowledge of what meetings were happening where, they still managed to run headlong into trouble.  It seemed that when Jyn had messed with the security feed of hallway 326 several Imperial engagements got moved around at the last second to avoid malfunctions that didn’t actually exist.  Willix didn’t know of the changes so Jyn found herself backtracking down a corridor at the quietest run she could manage, Willix right beside to her, to evade what sounded like a small group of high ranking Imperial officers coming toward them.  She brought herself up short when she spotted a long shadow stretching around a corner ahead of the person who cast it coming from the other direction.

They were trapped.

Willix hurriedly swiped a chip through a reader and pulled her into a small office suite, slamming on the button to close the door before it had even opened all the way. There was nothing in the office but a small desk that they wouldn’t both fit behind, and two uncomfortable looking chairs.  There wasn’t even a balcony they could escape onto since the office was in the interior section of the floorplan.   

“Vaping moffs! I hate this building!” Jyn muttered under her breath while Willix cursed in a language she didn’t recognize.  Some part of Jyn’s brain that wasn’t panicking noted this as an interesting fact.  Experience had taught her that people under stress always cursed in their native tongue.   Whatever else she may want to say about Willix, if this was a glimpse of his first language, then his crisp Coruscanti accent had completely fooled her from the start.

There was the hiss of pneumatics behind them and Jyn and Willix both turned hastily to see an older man in the olive green uniform and rank plaque of a Colonel enter the room.

Jyn instinctively moved closer to Willix, but stayed half a step behind him.

“What’s this?” The man narrowed his eyes as he studied them. “Lieutenant Willix isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” Willix said, falling back on military formality.

“And just what are you doing in here?”

Jyn had no answer and she could tell by the way Willix’s jaw worked without sound coming out that he didn’t have one either.  That was it. Game over.  They’d been caught by someone who wasn’t even trying.

The Colonel watched Willix struggle then his eyes slid over to take in Jyn before he frowned at the pair of them.  Jyn could almost see it as he registered their labored breathing and close proximity, Willix’s rumpled uniform, and her cheeks flushed with color.  His lip curled in disgust as he said, “Been sampling the local delicacies, I see.  I don’t think much of your taste, Willix. She looks a bit rough around the edges.”  Jyn was about to deliver a scathing reply to his assumptions of her character, but Willix discreetly pushed his elbow into her side and her mouth snapped shut.  “Don’t let me catch you like this again or I will be forced to report it,” the Colonel finished and turned to leave.

 “Yes, sir,” Willix snapped his salute, heels clicking together in textbook fashion, as the Colonel left the office, the door sliding shut behind him.

Jyn was both baffled and indignant at having been apparently insulted.  “What?  Did he think – Are you kidding me? Is this standard operating procedure for Rebellion Intelligence?” she demanded of Willix. “Or even for Imperial officers?  You go around engaging in amorous activities on Imperial bases so they look the other way while you get away with treason?”

“No, of course not,” he answered like it was a ridiculous question.

“So it’s just you then,” Jyn accused, folding her arms in front of her.

He glared at her as though there were several things he would like to say, but he settled for, “We need to go.”

“I just want it on the record that I find it absurd that all these highly trained Imperial soldiers are willing to overlook the fact that I am clearly not supposed to be here, an intruder if you will, during a security alert, just because they assume we are – we were inappropriately occupied!”

“Then the record should also show that you are only alive and free right now because of that absurdity, so perhaps you should just let it go,” countered Willix.

Jyn let out a dissatisfied huff and followed Willix out the door.  Fortunately for everyone involved they encountered far fewer potential threats the closer they got to the service lift.  When the car arrived it was only half full of containers and cargo crates so there was still plenty of room for Jyn.

“I’ll see you up there in fifteen,” Willix said as he inserted his access chip into the reader and hit the indicator light for street level.  Jyn merely nodded her agreement and braced herself for the quick ride down.  She now had to think about how she wanted to play the role of Baroness Zahava Q’mel of Serenno. 

Jyn didn’t exactly have a lot of experience with aristocracy and wealth having grown up on an unsuccessful farm and in various hidden Partisan strongholds.  As she pulled a long skirt on over her trousers in a refresher she had located on the entrance level of the Trade Hall, she decided that this wasn’t a time for subtlety.  She would never be able to convince anyone, let alone an Imperial officer, that she was full of the easy manners and unconscious grace that came with living a life unburdened by the hardships of war.  She studied herself in a mirror as she shook her hair out of its customary messy reverse braid and let it fall loosely about her shoulders.  The lighter shade of her hair went well with the silver accents picked out in careful designs on the elegant fabric she had wrapped about her torso in a complicated fashion.  These clothes didn’t blend in to the crowd at all, not like the usual trousers, tunic, and form fitting black jacket she wore as Tanith Pontha.  So Jyn would play to that.  If everyone had their eyes on her, then Willix could do whatever he needed to do to get the med supplies onto the _Crystal Fire._ She added some gaudy dangling earrings to the ensemble and checked herself one last time before sweeping from the ‘fresher.

On her way to the bank of turbolifts Jyn liberated a silvery flask from a man who had oily hair and boots too polished to be useful.  She couldn’t tell what was in it, but it was strong and left a metallic tang on the back of her tongue.  Zahava Q’mel, Jyn finally decided, was going to be a mix between some of Wynssa Starflare’s typical wealthy damsel characters and her friend Maia who had been a gregarious and free-spirited drunk.  The spaceport permit she had altered the night before was all she needed to gain access to the private rooftop hangar.  With a last swig from the flask for added courage, Jyn stepped haughtily from the lift car and proceeded to waltz right past the Imperial inspection team waiting at the hangar entrance.

She spotted the _Fire_ immediately sitting only four ships down the line next to and across from at least three _zeta_ -class Imperial cargo shuttles.  Sitting between her ship and one of the shuttles was a cargo skiff hovering on repulsors carrying half a dozen crates.  They had to be the med supplies that Willix was after.  Jyn searched the hangar for Willix as she sashayed across the floor and saw him overseeing a cargo transfer to one of the other _zetas._   He gave her a shallow nod, his face remaining impassive.  She changed her course to make her way toward the skiff, ignoring calls of “Ma’am, you can’t just--” from behind her.  She didn’t move in a straight line, but she didn’t stagger either.  Jyn wanted to appear somewhere between tipsy and drunk, but not inebriated enough that she would be kept from boarding her ship. 

Just as she approached a man in a Trade Hall uniform who was busy with a fuel line, a second cargo skiff pulled up just behind the first with its own load of crates.  Perfect timing.  Pretending to trip over her long skirt, Jyn tumbled into the Trade Hall tech.

“Oh, dear me! I’m so sorry!” she said and patted him on the chest before pushing off him and stumbling her way right into the control panel of the unmanned skiff.  Despite shouts of “Ma’am, please!” trying to deter her, Jyn managed to hit the reverse and toggle the throttle on the skiff to send it shooting backward into the new arrival.  The skiff operator tried to swerve to avoid a collision, but he wasn’t fast enough.  The two skiffs met with a metallic crunch and the crates from both went tumbling in all directions.  Jyn bit down on a smile as she finally turned to acknowledge the Imperial squad that was moving into position around her.

“You know,” Jyn paused to study the rank badge on the Imperial officer in front of her, “Commander, you should really know better than to just park these things in the middle of the room.”

“Ma’am you’ll have to come with us.  You’re not permitted in this hangar,” the Commander told her.

Jyn scoffed.  “Of course I’m allowed to be here.  My ship is here,” she said pointing in the direction of the _Crystal Fire_ , “therefore I can be here.”

The officer raised a dubious eyebrow.  “Then you must present your permit for inspection.”

“Naturally,” Jyn rolled her eyes at the man.  “You Empire types, always with the paperwork and bureaucracy.”  She dug around in her top of wrapped fabric for the permit chip and pulled it out along with the stolen flask.  She handed the chip over to the Commander who immediately ran it through a datapad given to him by an aide.  Then she put the flask to her lips and gave it a disappointed sniff when she found it to be empty.  She pushed the useless container into the hands of one of the men keeping a loose hold on her elbow.

“Baroness Zahava Q’mel, it seems you’re not expected to leave Brentaal for another few days at least.  To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”

That almost brought Jyn up short.  She didn’t think they cared how long you were supposed to be planetside.  “What, a woman’s not allowed to use her own ship now? Plans change.”

The officer glanced down at his datapad again and frowned.  “It says here you came in on a light freighter called _Crystal Fire._ ”

“That is unfortunately correct.”

“Forgive me for saying so, Baroness, but that seems unlikely.  Not only does it not seem like a ship fit for a Baroness of Serenno, but I was under the impression that ship was moved to this hangar after it had originally docked elsewhere in the city.”

Damn these Imperial types were observant!  Jyn had to do some quick thinking.  She knew that Willix had had the ship moved, but he never told her the official reason.  Hopefully the Commander didn’t know the official reason either.

“Well if you want to get technical about it, my good for nothing husband owns the freighter.  _I_ own an absolutely gorgeous and exceedingly comfortable luxury star yacht called _Stellar Dream_.  But Jerrus insisted we take the _Fire_ for this trip because it had more cargo space and he just _had_ to have more of that Alderaanian wine.  He didn’t want to pay for the private dock, but having to wade through all those common traders was unbearable, so I had the ship moved,” invented Jyn.  She was starting to get into this role of rich, slightly drunk, jilted lover.  She moved in closer to the officer to poke him in the chest as she continued.  “I’ll tell you what, Commander, if he thinks he can get away with cheating on me with that floozy Ishta, then I’m taking the ship and the wine, and he can find his own damn way home.”

“Baroness, I’m not sure I should let you take your husband’s ship.”

Jyn gave the man an imperious look that said _just try to stop me_. “Oh really?  Tell me Commander, whose name is on that permit?”

“Ah, yours ma’am.”

“That’s right.  Mine.  So I think I will be taking _my_ ship out of this system along with the cargo we came to this dump to pick up.”

Finally the man relented. “Of course, Baroness.  Give us just a few minutes to sort out the cargo.  There seems to have been a bit of a mix up.  I’ll have your ship removed from the watch list and cleared for takeoff.”

“The watch list?” Jyn asked haughtily.  “What precisely is it being watched for?”

“Just a precaution, Baroness.  Nothing to worry about.”

“If you say so.  Who’s in charge of this mess?” She asked of no one in particular as she observed the disorder she had created.  She spotted Willix amid the crash site trying to help the skiff operator to stand up.  Jyn pointed right at him and said, “You there, I’m putting you personally in charge of making sure my cargo gets aboard my ship.”

Willix looked around at those near him before deciding that Jyn was talking to him. “Me?” he asked.  “I’m sorry, ma’am, that’s not really my job.  My men can –“

“I don’t want your men to do it.  I don’t like the look of them.” Jyn leaned in to the Commander conspiratorially and stage whispered, “Shifty eyes.”  She gave the troopers stationed at various points around the hangar as well as the Trade Hall ground crew a significant look.  She could see several of the officers in her periphery roll their eyes at her claims.  “But, I like the look of you, pretty boy.  You’ll see to my cargo for me.”

“Sir?”  Willix turned to the Commander with an almost pleading look that certainly had Jyn convinced of his desire to do anything but be the personal lackey of a crazy woman.

The Commander just sighed like he hadn’t joined the Imperial Navy to deal with unruly civilians.  “Just see to the cargo, Lieutenant, and get this mess cleaned up.”

“Yes, sir,” Willix responded, looking resigned to his fate. 

The commander handed Jyn’s permit back to her and gestured at the men still holding her to follow him back to the inspection point near the hangar entrance.  Jyn turned back to Willix and gave him an authoritative wave of the hand that told him to _get on with it_ , while she stared down anyone who dared look at her like she was a nuisance.

There was one hapless shuttle pilot standing near the cockpit of his own craft with a datapad in his hand watching the commotion in the hangar around him.  He had long dark hair pulled back from his shoulders, a pair of technician’s goggles resting on his forehead, and a gray pilot’s jumpsuit branded with the Imperial insignia.  His eyes were wide as he stared at her in stunned silence.  Jyn felt an inexplicable stab of guilt at sabotaging his load of cargo.  She distantly hoped that he wouldn’t be blamed for the six empty cargo crates he was going to be delivering if everything went according to plan.  Nevertheless, she glared at him with disdain until he looked back down at his datapad, returning to his pre-flight checks.

She strode over to the _Fire_ with her chin high in the air and just a slight wobble in her step to unlock the cargo bay and extend the ramp so Willix would be able to load the ship.  She stood aside to watch while Willix finished getting the jumble of cargo crates sorted out to his satisfaction.  By putting him in charge of cleaning up the mess and overseeing the transfer she had given him free reign to look at the numbers on the crates and assign the ones with the actual med supplies to her ship and the empty crates to the cargo shuttle belonging to the long haired pilot.  Once he signed off on the transfer as Lieutenant Willix, no one would know of the switch until it was far too late.  Now all they had to do to complete the heist was get Willix on board and takeoff without anyone noticing his sudden absence and alerting the four Star Destroyers in orbit to a possible defector.

“How’s it coming, Lieutenant?” Jyn asked, affecting a bored tone.  “I really don’t want to stand around all day and wait for whatever crap my lout of a husband has ordered to be put on board.  I’m far too sober for that and my flask ran dry ten minutes ago.”

“It won’t be long, ma’am,” Willix told her.  “I’m just waiting for a new skiff to be brought over so that we can move these crates onto your ship.”

“Well, hurry it up!” she snapped and Willix responded with remarkable swiftness to her command.  Jyn was starting to think she had missed her true calling as an actress.  Or maybe a grifter or con-artist of some kind.  Perhaps she’d give it a try if she ever got tired of smuggling.

It was at least another twenty minutes before Willix actually started loading the crates onto the _Fire._   He had, probably wisely, made sure the Trade Hall ground crew and a few odd Imperial ensigns were actively engaged in moving the crates Jyn knew to be the empty ones she had ordered earlier in the morning onto the Imperial shuttle before concentrating on what was going into her ship.  Willix had stayed in character and even asked her permission to have one of the Hall’s crewmen assist him in carefully stacking the crates on the _Fire_ since he was unable to do it on his own.  Jyn magnanimously granted his request, and proceeded to shout instructions at them from her vantage point near the boarding ramp.  She figured that by making herself as annoying as possible everyone in the hangar would be happy to see her gone that much sooner and hopefully it would take a while before anyone noticed that Willix had gone with her.  She had told him last night that it was ultimately down to him to make sure that his absence was neither noticed nor questioned.  He said he would deal with it, but Jyn had no idea how he planned to do it.

When everything was at last arranged to her satisfaction, the Trade Hall man left shouting range as fast as he could, but Jyn waylaid Willix under the pretense of complimenting his efficiency and organizational skills. 

“I’m going to retract the ramp but leave the bay door open,” she whispered to him.  “The power up sequence takes one minute and thirty-eight seconds.  You have that long to climb in and close the door behind you.”

Willix gave her a firm nod in acknowledgement.

Jyn raised her voice back to regular levels and reached up to pat Willix’s cheek saying, “Thanks for your help, Lieutenant.  Now off you trot!” and she shooed him off her ship.

“Ma’am,” he said and executed a precise military about-face to march down the ramp.

Jyn moved to the cockpit feeling insanely happy to be back on her own ship, but not near as happy as she would be to leave Brentaal and the Empire several parsecs behind. 

She had a small scare when she realized that whatever those Imperial bastards had done to circumvent her security protocols when they moved her ship up to the private spaceport, it had also completely scrambled her systems.  She was forced to prime her ship for launch according to the factory standard settings which added an extra minute to the procedure and always affected the efficiency of the inertial compensator.  Jyn growled in frustration and hoped that the added time wouldn’t negatively impact their escape. 

She looked up to see Willix quietly conversing with the Commander’s aide before slipping off toward a wall in the direction of the _Fire._   The aide, meanwhile, went to report to the Commander and whatever he told his superior had the man rushing to the fixed computer terminal near the entrance. This had the added benefit of forcing the Commander to turn his back on the room and made it that much easier for Willix to make a clean getaway.

The quiet hum of repulsors morphed into the low whine of engines as the sublights came online.  Jyn flipped switches and engaged fuel pumps as Willix used another skiff piled high with Imperial cargo as cover to move closer to the _Fire_.  He wasn’t running or moving in a way that would draw attention or suspicion from anyone who happened to see him.  He was simply moving purposefully, like a Lieutenant who had a job to do.  Jyn took a moment to admit to herself that if anyone had the right to criticize her operational subtlety it was probably this guy, but she would never say it out loud.  The noise of the engines grew as they reached full power and sat ready for Jyn to punch the throttle.

That was it.  Her start-up sequence was complete, she had clearance to launch from Imperial ground control, but the light on the console that indicated whether or not her bay door was closed and locked remained dormant. 

Where was Willix?  She had told him just over a minute and a half and he had had twice that to get on board.  Jyn wouldn’t wait around and he knew that.  She glared down at the indicator light, biting her lip in indecision.

There was nothing for it.  Delaying would look suspicious, especially since she had made her displeasure at the delay due to the cargo mishap well known to everyone in the hangar.  Jyn fired the repulsors and retracted the landing gear.  Just as she was going to hit the switch to seal the bay door the indicator light lit up.  Jyn grinned at the sky above her and hit the throttle to send the _Crystal Fire_ roaring toward the atmosphere.

Willix crept into the cockpit and crouched next to Jyn.  “That wasn’t so bad,” he said to her.  “One might even think you enjoyed yourself.”

She spared him a quick glance, her expression dubious.  “It’s not over yet.  We still have to get past those four Destroyers,” she said using her head to indicate the four wedge shaped capital ships coming into view.

“The Commander said he cleared you for takeoff which means they have no reason to stop us.”

“We’ll see,” Jyn said.  She kept one hand on the controls and the other wrapped around the kyber crystal that hung from a cord around her neck.  It was her ship’s namesake and her reminder of courage.

Both Jyn and Willix kept quiet as the _Crystal Fire_ made its way between the first two Destroyers then past the third.  The last Star Destroyer loomed large in the viewport but the guns remained quiescent and there was no shudder of a tractor beam locking onto their ship.  Soon there was nothing in front of them but the black void of space dotted by pinpricks of light from distant stars.  Jyn let out a breath she didn’t want to admit she was holding and Willix let his forehead sag against the side of her seat in relief.

“I’m plotting a short jump that would get us in the direction of Serenno just in case they’re tracking our trajectory, then we can jump to wherever you need, provided I have enough fuel,” announced Jyn.

“Sounds good to me.  I’ll have to contact someone anyway.”

Jyn entered the coordinates, let the navi-computer calculate a safe route through space, engaged the hyperdrive, and watched the stars stretch around them.

 

***

 

As Jyn promised, their first jump was short in terms of galactic distance, but it was still about an hour of flying time.  Willix lobbied her for private use of her comm array to make contact with the Rebellion, which she was loath to grant him, but he won out in the end.  After threatening all manner of bodily harm if he so much as thought about altering course without telling her or touched anything aside from the comm unit, she left him alone in the cockpit and made her way to the cargo bay.

Her first item of business was to strip off all the superfluous fancy clothing she had adopted to play the Baroness.  She removed the heavy earrings which were starting to make her earlobes ache, Jyn had no idea how people could stand to where such contraptions on a daily basis, and braided her hair back up into a state that wouldn’t flop in her eyes and tickle her face. Her next thought was to claim some form of payment for extracting a Rebel operative from the clutches of the Empire on short notice.  Eventually she’d have to find someone to buy the scopes and charges she was carrying, or maybe ask the two Duros what she was to do with it all now, but for the time being she was operating at a loss and had encountered far more trouble than she bargained for on Brentaal.  All in all, Jyn didn’t really feel all that bad about prying open the crates of med supplies until she found a decently sized container of bacta patches.  She also removed a few bottles of standard pain killers and stims along with a pot or two of burn cream.  Jyn stashed the lot of it in with her formerly dwindling medkit and felt much better about her compensation for her participation in the heist.

Not knowing what else to do, Jyn made her way back to the cockpit.  Willix had been allowed more than enough time to talk to his Rebel friends and figure out where to go.  She doubted he’d have her take him back to wherever the Rebellion kept its headquarters these days, but he could probably set up a rendezvous on some world in the Outer Rim.  She probably wouldn’t agree to go to Rebellion headquarters anyway.  What if someone recognized her and told Saw where she was and what she was up to?  She didn’t really think he cared much about her movements these days, but it was still an uncomfortable thought.

“Do we have a destination?” she asked once she had retaken her pilot’s couch.

Willix nodded.  She noticed that he was in shirtsleeves and spotted the tunic of his uniform and his cap laying in a heap on the ground.  He seemed just a bit looser now that we didn’t look so much like an Imperial officer.  “Atollon.  It’s a remote planet in the Outer Rim.  I have the coordinates.”

Jyn entered the new coordinates and ran a check to make sure she had enough fuel to get there. It would take two jumps to navigate their way there since there didn’t seem to be any major hyperlanes nearby.  The _Crystal Fire_ would make it there just fine, but she would need to refuel either on Atollon or somewhere nearby.  Though Willix’s use of the word “remote” didn’t bode well for hopes of that kind.  Maybe whomever he was meeting could help out.  She’d have to mention it to him later.

“I have some water and non-perishables, if you’re hungry,” Jyn eventually said into the silence of hyperspace.

“I’m fine.  Well,” Willix paused and rubbed a hand over his eyes, “I’d take a cup of caf if you have it.”

“Caf I can do.”  Jyn abandoned the cockpit again, only after giving Willix a stern warning glare to which he raised his hands in innocent surrender, and moved aft to the small galley space of the freighter.  After all the excitement, coming down from the adrenaline rush of the heist was making her tired too.  There was no way she was going to let herself fall asleep with a near stranger on her ship.  They may have worked together to evade the Empire, but she still didn’t trust him any further than she could throw him.

She returned to the cockpit with two mugs of steaming not-quite-strong-enough-but-better-than-nothing caf and handed one off.

“Thanks,” he said and only slightly grimaced after his first sip.

“I have a question,” Jyn stated.  Willix raised an eyebrow.  “How long before they notice you’re gone and they start looking for the _Fire_ because its crazy owner kidnapped an Imperial Lieutenant?”

A slight smile hitched up one side of Willix’s mouth.  “They shouldn’t ever notice.  Not really.  I had bribed my way off my shift in the east side city hangar so they won’t be looking for me there, and I told the Commander that I was going to check on things elsewhere so that no one in the private spaceport would miss me.”

“But eventually someone is bound to notice you haven’t reported in for a while.”

“Maybe.  But a lot of transfers and redeployments are being made while they are in the Core.  Remember what I said about the new Super Star Destroyers?”  Jyn nodded.  “They want a large number of experienced officers to staff the first one so they pulled ranks from several different operating ships, including the _Contrite_ where I was stationed, for transfer to the new capital ship.  We have an agent who works in Fleet Mobilization Command and he was able to send a transfer roster with my name on it to the _Contrite_ but left my name off the list going to the Super Star Destroyer.”

“That’s a handy trick.”

Willix shrugged.  “Exactly.  So even if my absence is temporarily commented on, eventually they’ll think I just got onboard a transport and left.  I get lost in the shuffle and no one notices that Lieutenant Willix just disappeared.”

He made it sound so easy, but Jyn knew that was anything but the truth.  It was surprisingly difficult to disappear in a galaxy teeming with life if you weren’t willing to stay on the run.

“You know,” she began, wanting to redirect her own thoughts, “I’ve been thinking about what you said about the Empire building something big.  There have been these rumors going around the underworld, about a weapon.  There’s nothing concrete, but everyone sounds either scared or disbelieving.”

Willix seemed to agree.  “That tallies with what I’ve heard as well.  A weapon or a battle station, something big.  There are rumors circulating through the Imperial Navy about a new battle station, but I can’t tell if they’re referring to the Super Star Destroyers, which could certainly be classed more as a station than a ship, or if it’s something else.”

“I think it’s a weapon of some kind,” said Jyn quietly.  She had never really given the rumors of one giant weapon much credence because it seemed superfluous.  The Empire didn’t need a Sun Crusher or a World Devastator or whatever equally horrifying name the weapon’s architects were sure to come up with.  They had already weaponized everything.  _Probably even my father_ she thought to herself bitterly.  “That’s what Talon Karrde thinks and that means something.”

“Talon Karrde?” Willix asked looking skeptical.  “You’re willing to believe a smuggler who trades information in order to make a quick credit or two?  Even without proof?”

Jyn crossed her arms in front of her in defiance.  “Frankly, I’m more inclined to trust Karrde than I am to trust you.”

“Whomever you believe, it doesn’t change the fact that all the evidence there is at the moment is years of shipping records and the undefined designation DS-1.”

Jyn couldn’t argue with that.  The Empire wasn’t known for transparency.  She could easily believe there was some massive construction project underway somewhere in the galaxy, she just didn’t want to think how deadly the results would be if the Empire was managing to keep it so secret.

The two of them lapsed into silence for a long while.  Jyn’s thoughts drifted as she stared at the bright blueness of hyperspace on the other side of the viewport.  She couldn’t imagine trying to fight something as vast as the Empire.  Just staying alive and going largely unnoticed in a galaxy dominated by a government that pulled the trigger at the slightest provocation was hard enough.  She didn’t think she could handle the extra weight of actively opposing them.  Willix and his Rebellion had an uphill battle ahead of them.  Of course, that was supposing the fractured network of cells that actually constituted the Rebel Alliance at the moment could ever get their act together and challenge the Empire.  It seemed an exhausting way to live one’s life.

Maybe that was why Willix appeared to have fallen asleep despite his upright position.  It surprised Jyn that he would let his guard down enough to actually fall asleep.  She supposed living among the enemy for so long had taken more of a toll than he had let on.

Jyn was forced to wake the sleeping man hours later when they finally came out of hyperspace around Atollon.  The planet didn’t look like much.  From orbit it had all the hallmarks of being a hot, dry planet with little water.  She certainly couldn’t see any evidence of cities or signs of habitation of any kind.  In other words, it was the perfect location for a secret Rebel base.  Willix hailed someone on the surface and asked for landing coordinates and, at Jyn’s insistence, a drum of fuel and a line to get it into the _Fire._   His conversation ended with a female voice saying, “We’ll send a skiff to meet you.”  Apparently even helping a Rebel Intelligence officer to escape the Empire wasn’t enough to earn you the privilege of knowing the base’s actual location.

Jyn couldn’t really blame them.

“You could stay, you know.  Help out,” Willix invited as they entered Atollon’s atmosphere.  “You have a lot of useful skills and you’re good in a crisis.  We could use someone like you.”

Jyn didn’t dismiss his earnest plea outright, but she didn’t give it any real consideration either.  She had no love of the Empire, but it wasn’t a fight she wanted to get involved in.  Besides, the Rebellion hadn’t exactly done her any favors over the years.  She couldn’t forget that Willix had manipulated her into this whole situation in the first place.

“I think I’ll just fuel up and go,” she told him.  She almost missed the quick flash of disappointment that crossed his features before Willix schooled his expression back into impassivity.  He shrugged and didn’t bring it up again.

There was indeed a skiff waiting on the rocky surface of the planet when they landed, but it was not helmed by a person.  Instead there was a squat, angular looking orange and white droid at the controls who warbled at them impatiently as Jyn lowered the ramp.

“Wow! Is that actually a C1-series astromech?  Those things are about twenty years out of date!” Jyn exclaimed.

The droid made a rude sounding noise and extended two mechanical arms from its top section before spinning its head about and delivering another series of scathing sounds.

“Well, excuse you!” Jyn said, trying not to smile.

“You can understand him?” Willix inquired.

“No, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that meant.”

Willix was fighting down his own smile.  “I guess not.  Come on, let’s get this fuel line going then we can unload the supply crates.”

They worked in an easy silence occasionally punctuated by the droid’s criticisms of how they arranged the cargo on the skiff.  They ended up mostly ignoring the astromech, much to its growing and rather vocal annoyance.

As they were struggling to lift the last crate onto the skiff, another ship passed over head and the astromech trilled in alarm.  Willix, on the other hand, smiled.  “Good.  That’ll be Kay.  He got here faster than I expected.”

Jyn raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.  Whoever this Kay person was he had to be pretty close to Willix.  She couldn’t imagine anyone less making him smile so freely like that.  She suddenly remembered his burst of laughter from the other night and quickly tore her eyes away from the man

Jyn Erso did not stare at men like some blushing schoolgirl.

With the last of the cargo offloaded and her ship containing enough fuel to at least get her to a civilized system, Jyn wasn’t quite sure how to part ways with the Rebel Willix.  Only then did it occur to her that she didn’t even know his name since Willix was clearly a cover identity.  But then, he only knew her as Tanith Pontha so perhaps they were even.  She probably wouldn’t get a straight answer if she asked anyway.

“Well, I’d say thanks for the good times, but it was really more stressful than anything else.”

“You had fun and you know it.  Especially at the end there as the Baroness,” he said with a smirk.

Jyn fought to keep her face straight.  “I’ll never admit to that out loud.”

He smiled.  “Thank you, Tanith.” Willix looked like he wanted to say more, but didn’t know what. 

“Good luck,” Jyn offered.

He just nodded and climbed into the seat beside the droid.  Jyn walked back up the ship’s ramp before retracting it.  She couldn’t help it, there was one last thing she had to know.

“Willix, why me?  Why ask me for help?”

“That wasn’t a hard decision,” he said and there was suddenly something completely different about his accent that made Jyn’s eyes go wide.  The tone was more melodic, the edges softer, the “Rs” rolling off his tongue elegantly.  He shrugged as though his choosing her and his suddenly revealed accent were no big deal.  “You already knew my name. One of them, at least.”

Jyn didn’t know what to say.  She couldn’t recall what name she had used with him upon their first encounter, but she knew that accent.  Didn’t she?

The droid was complaining again.  It was angrily pointing at Jyn with one mechanical arm and stabbing emphatically at the sky with the other.  Between its tone and its gestures Jyn clearly got the picture.  “Get on your ship and go away!”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Crazy droid,” she muttered.

The man she knew as Willix merely looked entertained.  “I just think he doesn’t want to head back to base until he’s certain you’ve cleared atmo and aren’t tracking the skiff.”

“Paranoid much?”

The droid grumbled and twirled its head again this time finishing the display by shaking his appendages angrily at Jyn.

Jyn held up her hands in surrender and rolled her eyes at the astromech.  “Fine. You win.  See you around, pretty boy.”  She hit the control for the bay door and headed to the cockpit to power up the _Crystal Fire_.  A precise minute and thirty-eight seconds later all systems were go and Jyn was pulling away from the surface of the planet.  She threw one last mock salute at Willix, a poor imitation of his own crisp salutes as an Imperial officer, and felt a strange wave of familiarity at the scene. 

The accent, the eyes, his knowing her as Kestrel Dawn, and his own claim that she had recognized him in some way.  Could he really be that last client from Toprawa?  The one who had been there when she first set foot on the ship that was to become hers under the name _Crystal Fire_?

Jyn watched as he seemed to laugh at her parting salute.  That too seemed familiar, but the odds of running into one person out of the whole galaxy after so long and amid such strange circumstances were astronomical.  She shook her head to clear it of such absurd thoughts and turned the nose of her ship skyward.  The stars were calling and Jyn had several compartments full of weapons just waiting to be sold.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you had fun. Extra points if you spotted the cameos. 
> 
> I have a feeling the third and final part of the Intersections series may take a little longer to get out since my plot for that story is a little less defined at this juncture than I would like it to be. Stay tuned!


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